Business Japanese · 26 September 2026 · 3 min read
Business Japanese for beginners: keigo, email and phone calls
Business Japanese is not a separate language. It is ordinary Japanese with a layer of politeness on top, a set of phrases that run the office day, and some fixed shapes for phone calls and email. Once you have the basics, you can learn the core of it in a few weeks.
Who it is for
Anyone starting work at a Japanese company, working with Japanese clients, or preparing for an interview in Japanese. You should be comfortable with です and ます (desu and masu) first. The first month of the daily course is enough.
The three levels of keigo
Keigo (敬語) is the word for polite language as a whole, and it has three parts:
- Teineigo (丁寧語), polite language. The です and ます forms you already know. Safe with anyone.
- Sonkeigo (尊敬語), respectful language. Raises the other person's actions: いらっしゃる (irassharu) instead of いる, いく or くる for someone you are showing respect to.
- Kenjōgo (謙譲語), humble language. Lowers your own actions: もうします (mōshimasu) instead of いいます when you give your name, as in たなかと もうします (Tanaka to mōshimasu).
The rule underneath all three is whose action it is. If it is theirs, you raise it. If it is yours or your company's, you lower it. Day 3 of the course covers this, along with uchi (うち, your side) and soto (そと, their side), which decide who counts as whose.
The phrases that run the office day
- おはようございます (ohayō gozaimasu): good morning, said as you arrive.
- おつかれさまです (otsukaresama desu): literally “you must be tired”, used all day as hello, thank you and see you later.
- おさきに しつれいします (osaki ni shitsurei shimasu): excuse me for leaving before you, said when you go home first.
- おせわに なっております (osewa ni natte orimasu): the standard opening of a phone call or email to a client.
Phone calls, meetings and email
The course is 20 days in four units. Unit 1 is the office day, introductions and the business card exchange, and keigo itself. Unit 2 is speaking: answering the phone, taking a message for a colleague who is out, taking your turn in a meeting, disagreeing without causing offence, and reporting a problem early, which Japanese offices call hōrensō (報連相): report, contact, consult.
Unit 3 is email. Japanese business email has a fixed skeleton: the addressee, a greeting, who you are, the point, and a closing line. Once you know the skeleton, most emails are a matter of filling it in. Unit 4 covers the rest of the job: quotes and invoices, titles and seating order, after-work drinks, job interviews, and what to say when something goes wrong.
The mistake beginners make
Putting お or ご on your own things. The honorific お raises what it is attached to, so おなまえ (onamae) is for someone else's name, never yours. When you introduce yourself, give your name with もうします and leave お out of it.
Common questions
How long does business Japanese take to learn? The course is 20 days. Using it with confidence takes longer, but the set phrases and the email skeleton are usable from the first week.
Do Japanese colleagues expect perfect keigo from foreigners? Usually not. Clear, polite です and ます with the key set phrases goes a long way, and getting the direction right, raising them and lowering yourself, matters more than knowing every special verb.
Can I learn business Japanese as a beginner? Once you have the basics, yes. The course assumes about a month of the daily lessons, and it teaches the business layer on top of that.
Keigo is a question of whose action it is, not a vocabulary list. Get that right and the rest is practice.