Reading Keigo in Japanese Novels: How to Tell Honorific from Humble Language

In February 2007, Japan’s Council for Cultural Affairs issued its report “Keigo no Shishin” (Guidelines on Honorific Language). Until then, Japanese schools usually taught keigo in three types: sonkeigo (honorific), kenjōgo (humble) and teineigo (polite). The guidelines split them into five: sonkeigo, the いらっしゃる・おっしゃる type; kenjōgo I, the 伺う・申し上げる type; kenjōgo II, also called teichōgo, the 参る・申す type; teineigo, the です・ます type; and bikago, the お酒・お料理 type, which simply makes words sound refined.

When you start reading Japanese novels, keigo in the dialogue is one of the things that makes you lose track of who is speaking to whom, and whose action a verb describes. This post uses the guidelines’ categories to show how to tell honorific and humble language apart, with lines from books in Aozora Bunko.

Keigo tells you the missing subject

Japanese conversation leaves out subjects all the time. In novels, there are scenes where dialogue runs on with very little narration, and line after line never says who is doing what.

This is where keigo helps. The guidelines point out that when the person being raised is clear from the situation, speakers often leave that person unsaid, as in 来週海外へいらっしゃるんでしたね (“You’re going abroad next week, aren’t you?”). Turn that around: once you know which type of keigo a verb is, you can usually work out the missing subject. One approach is to read keigo in novels first as a marker of whose action it is, and only then as a matter of politeness.

Sonkeigo: raising the person who acts

The guidelines define sonkeigo as words that describe the actions, things or states of the listener’s side or a third party, raising that person. いらっしゃる (to go, come or be), おっしゃる (to say), なさる (to do), 召し上がる (to eat or drink), the pattern お〜になる, and forms like 読まれる with 〜れる・られる all belong here.

When a sonkeigo verb appears, the person doing the action is not the speaker. It is someone the speaker is raising.

In Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro, Sensei meets the young narrator in a cemetery and asks him:

「誰の墓へ参りに行ったか、妻がその人の名をいいましたか」 “Did my wife tell you whose grave I went to visit?”

「いいえ、そんな事は何もおっしゃいません」 “No, she didn’t say anything like that.”

The second line has no subject in Japanese. But おっしゃいません is sonkeigo, so the narrator cannot be talking about himself. The person being raised is Sensei’s wife. Sensei refers to his own wife plainly, with 妻が and いいました. The narrator describes the same woman’s action with おっしゃる. The same action by the same person comes out in different words depending on who is speaking, and that difference shows how each of them stands in relation to her.

Later in the book, the wife says this to Sensei:

「珍らしい事。私に呑めとおっしゃった事は滅多にないのにね」 “How unusual. You hardly ever tell me to drink.”

Again the subject of おっしゃった is not stated, but because it is sonkeigo, it is Sensei, not the wife who is speaking. A wife using sonkeigo to her husband reflects the speech of the time the novel was written.

Kenjōgo I: raising the person the action is directed at

In the guidelines’ words, kenjōgo I describes an action going from the speaker’s side towards the listener’s side or a third party, and raises the person at the receiving end. 伺う (to visit, to ask), 申し上げる (to say), お目に掛かる (to meet), 差し上げる (to give) and the pattern お〜する belong here.

When a kenjōgo I verb appears, the person acting is usually the speaker or someone on the speaker’s side. The person being raised is where the action is headed.

When the narrator of Kokoro parts from Sensei at the end of the summer, he asks:

「これから折々お宅へ伺っても宜ござんすか」 “Would it be all right if I came to visit you at your home now and then?”

伺う is kenjōgo I, so the one going is the narrator himself. The destination is Sensei’s house, and お宅 is a respectful word for it. 宜ござんすか is an old form of today’s よろしいですか. Sensei answers only ええいらっしゃい, “Yes, do come.” The same action, the narrator coming to Sensei’s house, is 伺う from the narrator’s side and いらっしゃい when Sensei describes it as the other person’s action. Sonkeigo and kenjōgo I sit side by side in a single exchange.

Kenjōgo II: being formal towards the listener

The guidelines split humble language in two because the two kinds work differently. Kenjōgo II, or teichōgo, describes the speaker’s own actions in a formal way towards the person being spoken to. 参る (to go, to come), 申す (to say), いたす (to do) and おる (to be) belong here.

The guidelines explain the difference like this. 先生のところに伺います and 先生のところに参ります both mean “I’ll go to my teacher’s.” Said to the teacher, they work the same way. Said to someone else, 伺います raises the teacher, while 参ります is formality towards the listener. That is why 弟のところに伺います (“I’ll humbly visit my little brother”) sounds odd, while 弟のところに参ります is fine.

When you are reading, you can take kenjōgo II simply as the speaker addressing the listener formally. The guidelines also note that kenjōgo II is normally used together with ます.

One scene with all of them

Near the end of Miyazawa Kenji’s The Restaurant of Many Orders, several kinds of keigo turn up at once. A door in the Wildcat House says:

「十五分とお待たせはいたしません。」 “We will not keep you waiting even fifteen minutes.”

お待たせする is kenjōgo I and いたす is kenjōgo II. The guidelines treat お(ご)〜いたす as both at once: it raises the person at the receiving end and is formal towards the listener. Here the restaurant describes its own action, keeping the customers waiting, formally and to the customers.

From behind the door come the voices of the wildcat’s underlings:

「へい、ただいま。じきもってまいります。」 “Yes, right away. We’ll bring it shortly.”

「早くいらっしゃい。親方がもうナフキンをかけて、ナイフをもって、舌なめずりして、お客さま方を待っていられます。」 “Come in, quickly. The boss already has his napkin on and his knife in hand, and he’s licking his lips, waiting for you, our guests.”

The まいる in もってまいります is kenjōgo II; the underlings are the ones bringing it. いらっしゃい is sonkeigo for the customers’ action. The られる in 待っていられます is sonkeigo too, and it raises the boss. The underlings speak formally to the customers while also raising their own boss. On the surface it is the language of a fine restaurant; what it says is terrifying, and that gap is the joke of the story. How to read the whole story is in Reading Miyazawa Kenji as a Japanese Learner.

A step-by-step check

Here is one possible order.

1. Find the verb in the line and see whether it is keigo. Special verbs like いらっしゃる, おっしゃる, 伺う and 参る are fastest to simply memorise. There are not that many of them.

2. If it is sonkeigo, the subject is not the speaker. It is someone the speaker raises: the listener, or a respected person being talked about.

3. If it is kenjōgo I, the subject is on the speaker’s side, and the person raised is at the receiving end. With 伺う, it is the person being visited.

4. If it is kenjōgo II or です・ます, the speaker is being formal with the listener. It tells you about the distance between speaker and listener rather than who is being raised.

5. If the form confuses you, お〜になる is sonkeigo and お〜する is kenjōgo I. 〜れる・られる can also be passive or potential, so check the sentences around it.

The guidelines add one more warning: some forms work as sonkeigo or kenjōgo I depending on use. 先生からのお手紙, a letter from the teacher, raises the teacher as the writer (sonkeigo). 先生へのお手紙, a letter to the teacher, raises the teacher as the recipient (kenjōgo I). When a noun has お or ご in front, look at から or へ and ask whose letter it is.

Keigo in older novels

Most books in Aozora Bunko were written around a hundred years ago. As in the lines above, you will see a wife using sonkeigo to her husband. You would not talk like that today, but as a clue to how each character sees the others, older keigo can be, if anything, easier to read.

Old expressions like 宜ござんす, and differences in speech between men and women or between regions, are a separate subject from keigo. Which Sōseki book to start with is in Reading Natsume Sōseki as a Japanese Learner.

Checking keigo as you read with Niho

Niho, an app I make for iPhone and iPad, lets you read Aozora Bunko books with a built-in dictionary. It is free, with no ads and no in-app purchases.

Long-press a word in the text and tap Look up. When the JMdict dictionary has a usage note for a word, the sheet shows it, including honorific, humble and polite. Look up words like 伺う, 参る, 申す or 召し上がる and you can see which kind of keigo they are on the spot. Note that the dictionary’s “humble” label does not separate kenjōgo I from kenjōgo II. Whether a verb is the 伺う type or the 参る type is something to judge with the guidelines’ explanation above.

For scenes full of dialogue, switching to Chat view helps. The chapter arrives one sentence at a time in speech bubbles, and lines of dialogue in 「」 appear on the right, so narration and speech are clearly apart. It suits reading one sentence at a time and checking whose action each verb describes. Words you look up are saved to your word book with the sentence you met them in, so you can go back later and see the scene where a keigo verb was used.

Getting Started with Niho walks through your first book.