Japanese Keigo: The Complete Guide for Professionals

Most guides will tell you keigo has three types. That is the school textbook version, and if you've ever followed it to the letter and still watched a Japanese colleague wince, this is probably why.

Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs settled the question in 2007 with five categories. Two of them are exactly the ones that trip up people who are otherwise fluent. There is also a rule about group membership that outranks everything else, and almost no English-language guide bothers to mention it. Miss that rule and you will produce the single most recognisable foreigner mistake in Japanese business, while following everything you were taught perfectly. That's a miserable way to be wrong, and it isn't really your fault.

So let's fix it properly. All five categories, the group rule, a verb table you can actually use, and the handful of mistakes worth knowing. Everything here is checkable against the primary source, and I have linked it.

What you will get from this guide

• Keigo has five official categories. The two that most guides merge are the ones that cause errors.
• Group membership beats rank. Talking to a client, your own boss gets humble forms.
• Sonkeigo describes what other people do. Kenjougo describes what you do. Mixing those up is the most common mistake there is.
• One of the "errors" other guides warn you about is not actually an error.

What keigo does

Keigo writes social relationships into grammar. The verb form you pick tells the listener who is being raised, who is being lowered, and how formal this moment is, before anyone says a word about it.

English does some of this too. "Could you possibly send that over?" and "send that over" mean the same thing and land completely differently. The difference is that English leaves it to word choice and tone, while Japanese builds it into the verb. You don't get to opt out of it. Every sentence you write makes a claim about the relationship.

That is why memorising phrases stops working around the intermediate level. You are not learning a list of polite expressions. You are learning to describe one action from several different social positions, and to pick the right one on the spot.

The five categories

The Agency for Cultural Affairs published its keigo framework in 2007 as an advisory report, 「敬語の指針」 (keigo no shishin, the keigo guidelines). It defines five categories, and it is what Japanese style guides defer to when they disagree (文化庁, 報告・答申・建議等).

Three of them do the daily work. The other two are worth knowing so you stop filing verbs in the wrong drawer.

1. 尊敬語 (sonkeigo): raise the other person

Sonkeigo describes what someone else does, in a way that lifts them. Use it for clients, executives, and anyone whose actions you are reporting with respect.

Some verbs have their own dedicated forms. "言う" (iu, to say) becomes "おっしゃる" (ossharu). "行く" (iku, to go) becomes "いらっしゃる" (irassharu). For everything else, the pattern お + stem + になる does the job: "読む" (yomu) becomes "お読みになる" (oyomi ni naru).

部長がお読みになりました。 Buchou ga oyomi ni narimashita. The department head read it.

One rule here, and it is absolute. Never point sonkeigo at yourself.

2. 謙譲語I (kenjougo I): lower yourself toward a specific person

Kenjougo I describes your own action when that action lands on someone in particular. Someone specific is on the receiving end, and that is the whole point of the category.

"伺う" (ukagau, to visit or to ask), "申し上げる" (moushiageru, to say), and "拝見する" (haiken suru, to look at) all work this way.

明日、御社に伺います。 Ashita, onsha ni ukagaimasu. I will visit your company tomorrow.

3. 謙譲語II / 丁重語 (kenjougo II, also called teichougo): be formal toward whoever is listening

Here's the one most guides quietly fold into the one above, and that merge is where the trouble starts. Kenjougo II lowers nothing in particular. It just signals formality toward your listener.

"参る" (mairu, to go or come), "申す" (mousu, to say), "いたす" (itasu, to do), and "おる" (oru, to be) live here. Put the two side by side:

明日、御社に伺います。 (ukagaimasu, kenjougo I, you are going to that particular company) 明日、大阪に参ります。 (mairimasu, kenjougo II, Osaka is a place, not someone you defer to)

Both are humble. Only one of them has a target. Say 「大阪に伺います」 and you have politely implied that Osaka is your superior.

4. 丁寧語 (teineigo): be polite to your listener

The です and ます endings you learned first. Teineigo moves nobody up or down. It sets a polite floor, and that is all it does.

明日会議があります。 Ashita kaigi ga arimasu. There is a meeting tomorrow.

Plenty for colleagues at your level. Not enough on its own for clients or senior management, where the other categories have to carry the relationship.

5. 美化語 (bikago): make the word itself prettier

The お and ご you see on nouns: "お茶" (ocha, tea), "ご飯" (gohan, rice or a meal), "お店" (omise, shop). Bikago is about the speaker sounding refined. Nobody is being raised or lowered.

You already use these without thinking about it. The reason to know the name is so you stop counting them as respect toward someone, which is what leads to piling on prefixes that do no work at all.

The rule that beats rank: uchi and soto

Now the part that gets left out, and the reason I put it before the verb table.

Japanese sorts people into 内 (uchi, inside your group) and 外 (soto, outside it). That line matters more than seniority does.

Inside your company, your department head sits above you, so their actions take sonkeigo. Talk to a client about that same person and the line moves. You and your boss are both uchi now, the client is soto, and your boss gets humble treatment. Their title and any honorific on their name come off too.

The version in the right column is grammatically flawless. It is also the clearest possible sign that someone learned keigo from a rulebook rather than from a room. You have just raised your own colleague in front of a customer.

If you only take one thing from this guide, take this: group first, then rank.

Quick reference: common verbs

Romaji is included because a table of bare kanji is no use to half the people who need it.

Two of those cells usually come out wrong elsewhere, so they are worth a moment.

あげる has no sonkeigo form at all. "くださる" belongs to "くれる" (kureru), which is a different verb. Both land in English as "give", and that is exactly why they get merged. Japanese splits them by direction: "あげる" is giving away from you, "くれる" is giving toward you. Sonkeigo raises the giver, and in "あげる" the giver is you, so there is nobody there to raise.

もらう has no sonkeigo form either, for the same reason.

Where two humble forms sit in one cell, the first is kenjougo I and the second is kenjougo II. Reach for "申し上げる" when you are saying something to a particular person, and "申す" when you are simply speaking formally.

Choosing a level

Three things decide it, in this order: who the other person is, what the channel is, and what the situation is.

That bottom row matters as much as the top one. Heavy keigo aimed downward reads as sarcasm, or as distance you did not intend to create.

Channel moves the dial. Formal email takes the full apparatus, cushion phrases and proper closings included. Chat takes teineigo with the occasional respectful form, because full keigo in Slack reads as stiff. Phone behaves like email, especially on a first call.

Situation moves it again. Start high on first contact, since you can always relax later and you cannot undo a first impression that landed too casual. Go one level above your normal setting for an apology or an awkward request. In an established relationship, settle roughly where your counterpart has settled.

Switching levels inside one message

Longer messages routinely need all three working categories, because the person being described changes from sentence to sentence.

Reporting to your manager about a client meeting:

先日、田中様がおっしゃったのですが… Senjitsu, Tanaka-sama ga osshatta no desu ga... Regarding what Tanaka-sama said the other day... (sonkeigo, the client is raised)

…私から資料をお送りいたしました。 ...watashi kara shiryou o ookuri itashimashita. ...I sent the documents. (kenjougo, your own action)

来週のミーティングで確認します。 Raishuu no meeting de kakunin shimasu. I will confirm at next week's meeting. (teineigo, neutral to your manager)

Three categories, three sentences, each one correct for whoever it describes. This is the skill that takes longest to build, and it is the reason phrase lists stop helping you at some point. Nobody picks this up quickly. If it still feels like work a year in, you're on schedule.

Mistakes worth knowing

Pointing sonkeigo at yourself

私が申しました。 Watashi ga moushimashita. I said it.

Write 「私がおっしゃいました」 (watashi ga osshaimashita) and you have put the honorific on your own head. It reads as confused, or as arrogant, and it is the fastest way to show that keigo has not gone automatic yet. Almost everyone does it at least once, usually in writing, usually to someone senior.

Double keigo (二重敬語)

Stack two markers from the same category on one verb and you have 二重敬語 (nijuu keigo). 「お読みになられる」 (oyomi ni narareru) uses both お〜になる and られる, and both of those are sonkeigo. 「お読みになる」 is the correct version.

The guidelines also note that a few double forms have become so established that nobody blinks at them now, 「お伺いする」 (oukagai suru) among them. Follow the rule, and hold it loosely where usage has already moved on.

拝見いたしました is not the error you were warned about

Several English guides list this one as doubled humility. That is stricter than the primary source supports. "拝見する" is kenjougo I and "いたす" is kenjougo II, so the combination links two different categories rather than doubling one, and the guidelines treat that as legitimate. Some conservative style manuals still prefer 「拝見しました」, so either choice is defensible.

I have included it because a guide that flags correct Japanese as broken teaches you to distrust sentences that were fine. You've got plenty to second-guess already.

Forgetting the group boundary

Covered above, and worth repeating here because it survives everything else you learn. 「弊社の田中が申しております」 to a client. Never 「田中部長がおっしゃっています」.

Where to go from here

Keigo goes automatic through use, and use means sending messages before it is automatic. That gap is uncomfortable, and it's where most people stall out. The Agency for Cultural Affairs keeps a plain-language keigo resource that is worth reading next to the formal guidelines (文化庁, 敬語おもしろ相談室).

Veltone covers the part you cannot do instinctively yet. Set the tone, say who you are writing to, and it writes the message, then highlights the phrases carrying the relationship and explains what each one is doing. Reading those notes on your own messages, in your own situations, is what makes the choices stick.