TOKYO — Education minister Nariaki Nakayama on Wednesday asked a government panel on the Japanese language to come up with guidelines on the use of the honorific and polite form of speech, known as “keigo” in Japanese, to counter its widespread misuse, ministry official said.

“Although many people feel the need to use ‘keigo,’ it can hardly be said that they are using it properly,” Toshio Kojima, senior vice education minister, said in explaining the reason for making the request on Nakayama’s behalf.

The minister also asked the Council for Cultural Affairs — an advisory body to the government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs — to review the most commonly used Chinese characters in Japanese to reflect their current usage on computers.

The council’s subcommittee on the Japanese language is expected to discuss the issues and come up with a final report within two years for “keigo” and four to five years for the Chinese characters, known as the “joyo kanji.”…

A 2003 survey on the Japanese language by the agency found that 96% of Japanese believe “keigo” will remain a necessary part of speech in the future, while 60% said they do not mind using extremely polite phrases even though they may be considered grammatically incorrect by purists.

The subcommittee will check on the use of honorifics and polite phrases deemed to deviate from perceived standard usage, including phrases commonly used by sales clerks.

The guidelines will study the three conventional “keigo” categories — honorific, self-effacing and polite — to improve understanding of proper usage and indicate specific situations when each level of speech should be used as well as examples of improper usage.

As for the “joyo kanji,” Kojima said the current “joyo kanji” table should be reviewed in line with the widespread use of computers.

The current table, which specifies 1,945 common Chinese characters, has not been updated since 1981.

The subcommittee will conduct research in the next two years on the public’s ability to write and read Chinese characters, and how frequently certain ones are used for the names of people and places, as well as on some characters that are often used on computers but not included in the table.

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