ABSTRACT
Outside the literary world, a considerable amount of time was to elapse before bungotai was replaced by colloquial style in all areas. Because of entrenched views on the nature of the written language appropriate to the press, the style of most newspapers remained traditional until the 1920s, while it was not until the 1940s that official documents and government decrees were converted. Japan was about to embark at bureaucratic level upon what Jiri Vaclav Neustupny has termed the policy approach to language problems, characteristic of a modernizing society. Some sort of ruling was necessary to establish a policy on the use of honorifics. At a meeting of vice-ministers on 17 June 1946, it was decided that while de aru would be the standard form of colloquial style in public documents, the semi-formal -masu style could also be used in cases such as reports or enquiries where some degree of deference was deemed necessary.
