Japanese honorifics, the colleague’s email, and pride

My dad works with a lot of Japanese people. In his exchange email, they address him as followed:

“Huan-san,

Please send me the following...”

They use the honorific “San” in every email to their colleagues. It is a neutral gender that address all of “Ms”, “Mr”, “Mrs”. That’s the Japanese way of being polite and showing respect.

Imagine that a person from a country whose culture is less well-known to the world use their honorifics the same way Japanese people. I imagine the foreign colleagues would frown the eyebrows in confusion first, after they look up the term, they would chuckle. Sometimes, they just find it amusing, but most of the time, they think “Erm, Why use this, most of us have not idea on the term.”

Now not all of us would be familiar with Japanese honorifics. But, “san” would be much more known than other honorifics from a lesser known country.

Japanese people are aware of this. It shows that they have such pride in their culture.