親と話すとき私は「僕」
友と話すとき私は「俺」
もし親と友と私が
みんな同じ場所にいたら
そのときの私は「誰」
If someone says to you, “I can’t be myself around you,” what exactly do they mean?
I’ve heard there’s a Zulu saying, “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. (‘A person is a person through other people.’)” One way you might understand the shifting Japanese personal pronoun is as being symbolic of the concept that who you are is who you’re with.
This website has a good primer, if you need it, on the variety of ways to say “I/me” in Japanese. Two key lines: “Japanese pronouns convey a variety of subtexts, including formality level, gender identity, social hierarchy, and psychological distance.” Japanese speakers “switch pronouns depending on where, when, and to whom they’re talking, as well as how they want to present themselves.”
I’ve done this too. Speaking with one person, I might call myself boku. With another, watashi or even ore. You might account for this aspect of Japanese as simply a linguistic quirk, but what if it points to more?
I can think of times when, say, a friend of mine, my parents, and I were all in one place for the first time. Around that friend, I am one person; around my folks, I am a different person. With both parties present, who am I to be?
At such times, a feeling seizes me that I might almost characterize as a dysphoric paralysis of the self. Have you ever felt something like that?
As my little Japanese poem says, I can be boku with one person, ore with another—but, if I am a person through other people, and the people around me form some new combination within which my self is yet undefined, then, for a queasy while, I am not boku nor ore but dare—which means “who”.