Okosan, piano jōzu ni naraharimashita nā (お子さん、ピアノ上手にならはりましたなぁ): your child has become good at the piano. In Kyoto, this is said to be a neighbor’s way of asking for the playing to stop.
Hiroi ouchi de sodachihatta n ya nē (広いお家で育ちはったんやねぇ): you must have grown up in a big house. Said to mean that a voice is too loud.
The news site J-CAST gave both examples in 2025.
A sample payment reminder in a Japanese accounting guide contains this line: Nao, honjō to ikichigai ni ofurikomi itadaite orimashitara goyōsha negaimasu. If payment has crossed with this letter, please forgive us.
An accounting guide advises that, even when the customer made the mistake, the reminder should not reproach but should politely ask for payment.
Japanese marketers use the term sairento kurēmā, silent claimer, for a dissatisfied customer who says nothing.
In a 2006 study of Japanese university students by Ikeuchi Hiromi, about 20 percent had actually voiced a complaint. The rest took no action. A 1999 study by Fujimura found that only about 19 percent of hospital outpatients, 22 percent of inpatients and 29 percent of business hotel guests had complained.
In 2022, Nikkei Research surveyed company employees among Nikkei subscribers about their suppliers. It found large amounts of dissatisfaction and disappointment that had never come to the surface. In the materials supply sector, only 56 percent of those who had felt such disappointment in the past year would contact the supplier to complain.
In 1974, the scholar Ueda Keiko described sixteen ways in which Japanese speakers express refusal.
Among the ways she described are a vague answer that is neither yes nor no, an excuse, “yes, but,” and a delayed answer such as kangaete okimasu, I will think about it.
Chotto… (ちょっと…): a little… A sentence left unfinished, as in Sono hi wa chotto…, that day is a little…
A Japanese study of refusals calls such forms iisashi, sentences left unfinished. It explains that leaving the end of the sentence unsaid keeps one’s opinion from striking the other person directly. Among the unfinished forms in the study, chotto stood out as especially frequent.
In a street speech on June 26, 2022, the opposition politician Tsujimoto Kiyomi said that Prime Minister Kishida Fumio’s nickname was kentōshi, the envoy of consideration. The name plays on his repeated answer kentō shimasu, we will consider it, and on the kentōshi, the envoys Japan once sent to Tang China.
Muzukashii desu ne (難しいですね): that is difficult. A common way to refuse a request politely without saying no.
Maemuki ni kentō shimasu (前向きに検討します): we will consider it positively. Sometimes used to avoid an immediate answer or to decline gently. It is not a promise.
Kekkō desu (結構です): that is fine. It can mean acceptance or refusal, depending on the situation.
A study at Hitotsubashi University describes a meeting between Prime Minister Satō Eisaku and President Richard Nixon. Shaking hands, Satō clearly promised Nixon that Japan would restrain its textile exports to the United States by the end of the year. Satō later said that there was no paper, and that he had never promised anything concrete, even orally.
A popular version of the story says that Satō answered zensho shimasu (I will deal with it appropriately), and that Nixon took this as a commitment. No source for that wording was found.
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