Japanese Third Person Pronouns: Kare, Kanojo and What People Really Say

The name tag stays on: names and titles instead of he and she

English introduces a person once and then switches to he or she. Japanese introduces a person and keeps the same label. Picture everyone in the conversation wearing a name tag: Tanaka-san, sensei, buchō, okāsan. When you want to refer to that person again, you read the tag again, or, more often, you say nothing because the listener already knows who is on stage.

Here are two colleagues at their desks at six in the evening. One asks about Tanaka-san, and the answer does not contain any word for he or she at all. The name is said once, then silence does the work of the pronoun.

Kare and kanojo: what they mean and how they are built

Kare is an old pointing word, a cousin of are, that one over there. Kanojo, literally that woman, was settled on in the Meiji era, when translators needed a word for the she of European novels. That history explains the flavour: both words point from a distance and carry a trace of the printed page.

Grammatically they behave like any noun. Add no for his and her, add ra or tachi for the plural, and attach particles as usual. The table sets them beside the other ways of referring to a third person, from most respectful to roughest.

Notice that only kare and kanojo mark gender. Ano hito, ano kata and aitsu do not, which is one more reason they are so useful: you can talk about someone without knowing or stating anything beyond the fact that they are a person.

Ano hito, sono hito, kono hito: pointing at a person

Ano hito works exactly like the other ko-so-a words. If the person is visible, kono hito is someone near you, for example in a photo you are holding, sono hito is near the listener, and ano hito is away from both of you.

When the person is not in the room, the choice depends on who knows them. Ano hito is someone you both know. Sono hito is someone only one of you knows, typically a person the other speaker has just mentioned. At a party, a friend tells you about a new neighbour you have never met, so you ask about sono hito, not ano hito.

Kare and kanojo as boyfriend and girlfriend

In casual speech the most frequent meaning of kanojo is girlfriend, and kare or the clearer kareshi is boyfriend. The name tag idea predicts this. If everyone in your life has a label, then the one person you call simply he or she must be someone who needs no label.

You can tell the meanings apart by the grammar. Verbs of having and getting, iru, dekiru, hoshii, and possessives such as boku no or uchi no, select the romantic meaning. Two friends catching up in a café might say the following.

The third sentence could also mean with him, if a particular man has just been discussed. Speakers who want to be unambiguous say kareshi. There is no everyday equivalent of kareshi for kanojo, so kanojo has to carry both meanings.

One word changed: what the listener hears

The pairs below differ only in the word for the person. Notice how much social information that one word carries.

In the first pair, the grammar is identical and both sentences are correct Japanese. What changes is the relationship the speaker claims. Yamada-sensei keeps the teacher in the role of teacher. Kare puts the teacher on the same level as the speaker, and that levelling is what listeners feel as coldness.

Beyond the basics: where kare and kanojo sound natural

None of this means kare and kanojo are rare words. In novels, news features, essays and subtitles they are everywhere, because a narrator stands outside the social scene and has no relationship to signal.

In speech, they are natural for people on your own level or below: friends, classmates, colleagues who joined when you did, a younger sibling's friend. Usage also varies by generation and by person. Many younger speakers use kare and kanojo quite freely, and people who spend a lot of time with English tend to use them more.

Aitsu, yatsu and karera: rough words and plurals

Aitsu, together with koitsu and soitsu, follows the same ko-so-a pattern as ano hito but drops all politeness. Between close friends it is affectionate teasing. About anyone else it sounds contemptuous. Yatsu, guy, works the same way: ii yatsu is a good guy, said warmly about a mate. Understand these words, and leave saying them until a Japanese friend uses them with you first.

For groups, karera is the dictionary they, and it can cover a mixed group. It belongs mainly to writing and formal speech. In conversation, ano hitotachi or a name with tachi is more common.

Common mistakes with kare and kanojo

The first mistake is a pronoun for a superior. Learners say kare wa yasashii desu about their teacher, because English he is neutral. In Japanese this strips the title, so say sensei wa yasashii desu.

The second is repeating the pronoun. Tanaka-san wa dōryō desu. Kare wa Ōsaka shusshin desu. Kare wa tenisu ga suki desu. Each sentence is grammatical, but together they sound translated. After the first sentence, drop the subject: Ōsaka shusshin de, tenisu ga suki desu.

The third is the accidental girlfriend. Kinō kanojo to shokuji shimashita, meant as I ate with her, will usually be heard as with my girlfriend. If she is a friend, say tomodachi to or use her name.

The fourth is introducing someone with a pronoun. Kare wa Tanaka-san desu is wrong when the man is standing beside you; the set form is kochira wa Tanaka-san desu. The fifth is using kare or kanojo for your own family when talking to outsiders. Say chichi, haha, ani or ane, which already mean my father, my mother and so on.

• Teacher, boss, customer: title or name, not kare or kanojo
• Same person in the next sentence: say nothing
• A female or male friend: tomodachi or the name, to avoid the romantic reading
• Person present: kochira wa, not kare wa or ano hito wa
• Your own family: chichi, haha, ani, ane, otōto, imōto

Pronoun, name or silence: choosing in real conversation

The nearest neighbours of kare and kanojo are the name with san and the dropped subject, and in speech those two win most of the time. Use the name when the person enters the conversation or when you switch between two people. Use silence while the same person stays the topic. Use kare or kanojo when the person is a peer and repeating the name for the fourth time would feel heavy.

Other posts on this site cover first-person words such as watashi, boku and ore, the many ways of saying you, and how to address people directly. The same principle runs through all of them: Japanese prefers a label that shows the relationship over a word that only fills a grammatical slot.

In casual speech the particle after the person often disappears, as in kare, saikin isogashisō da ne. Two classmates planning a dinner show the usual rhythm: name first, then nothing.