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"...MHI's chief executive, Shunichi Miyanaga, or Miyanaga-san as he is known throughout this building and beyond."

That's how everyone in Japan is addressed: $FAMILYNAME-san.



Right. And later we get incorrectly:

>> If Japan has an internationally known rocket personality, it is Ogasawara

He is introduced without honorific, no doubt because company insiders did so. But the reporter as an outsider is not entitled to do that.


Referring to someone by family name is standard Western journalistic practice; the specification of form of address for Miyanaga is only amusing to me because it's specifically called out.

Ogasawara has the added (and rather shocking, from a Japanese perspective) twist of insisting on being addressed by first name, which the journalist does after mentioning this.




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