JP The Keigo Firewall
Japanese honorifics keyboard for survival at work
- Target:
- New hires in Japan, foreign workers, anyone drafting their first email to 部長
- Pain:
- Thirty minutes of panic before sending a hundred-word email to the wrong level of 敬語
- Weapon:
- Type plain language → AI rewrites to the right register (to client, to senior, to boss), adjustable 'grovel level' 1–5
The pain
It’s your first month at a Japanese company. You need to email the 部長 (buchō, division head) to reschedule a meeting. You know the three layers of 敬語 exist in theory — 尊敬語 (raising the other person), 謙譲語 (lowering yourself), 丁寧語 (plain polite form). In practice you stare at the draft for thirty minutes, rewrite the opening four times, and still aren’t sure whether you should be using いただく, くださる, or 頂戴する.
Get the register wrong in the other direction — using 丁寧語 where 尊敬語 is expected with a 部長 — and Japanese colleagues will describe the offense as 切腹級 (seppuku-kyū), “seppuku-grade.” Career-damaging. Nobody will correct you out loud. Everyone will note it.
The AI weapon
You type what you actually mean, in casual Japanese or plain English: “Can we move Thursday’s meeting to Friday 3pm? Sorry for the short notice.” You set the target — To: 部長 — and a grovel dial from 1 to 5. The AI rewrites the whole mail in the exact register. At grovel 3 to a 部長 it comes back something like:
お忙しいところ恐れ入ります。誠に勝手ながら、木曜日の会議を金曜日 15 時に変更させていただくことは可能でございますでしょうか。直前のご連絡となり、深くお詫び申し上げます。
Sliding the dial up to 5 adds the deeper 謙譲語 forms. Down to 1 gives you something you’d send to a same-year colleague.
The aha moment
The foreign intern sends a message that reads like it was written by a fifty-year-old executive who has been at the company for twenty-five years. The 部長 replies warmly within ten minutes. The intern never had to learn the difference between いただく and 頂戴する to get there.