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Well, if you call anybody Yoshifumi-san (given that Yoshifumi is their given name), he would be very upset. They make it clear that whenever you use their give
by henearkr 6y ago
Well, if you call anybody Yoshifumi-san (given that Yoshifumi is their given name), he would be very upset.
They make it clear that whenever you use their given name you should NOT add "san" to it.
So that's kind of weird that they do it for foreigners.
Yes they add "-san" to pretty much anything, but their given name is the one notable exception.
I think that there are ancient roots of this, for example in the Heian era the fact to be in relationship with a girl was synonymous to know her given name, and use it to call her before the date ("yobai"). The given name in Japan is something very personal and private, and this would explain why it seems incongruous to them when it is used with "-san".
- laurieg 6y agoOh, I didn't make things clear. The email was completely written in English. I think there has to be a little cross-cultural understanding both ways in these situations.
- henearkr 6y agoAh, my bad, I was speaking about when conversing completely in Japanese. Maybe they react differently / have different expectations when they are writing / speaking English. From my experience, when speaking in Japanese, they are quite strict (if you are not a customer of course, in this case they would hide their feeling) about not adding "-san" to their given name, when they allow you to use the bare given name. In the story you relate, in this email in English, was it the given name that was used, or the family name?