This brings up a problem I note every once in a while, even in

otherwise

excellent
fics.  For instance (to use a *very* illustrious example), Richard

Lawson's

"The Nature of Love", which contains the line:

And Kentaro began, for the first time, to doubt the personal

pronouns he

used

when referring to Ranma.

Now I'm far from conversant in Nihongo myself, but I know enough so

that

lines like
the above abruptly jar me out of my 'willing suspension of

disbelief'.  You

 can't
write in English without using sex-indicative personal pronouns

(I've

tried, briefly),
but you *can* avoid making plot points or epiphanic moments around

them.

Actually, with all due respect to both Miller-san and Lawson-san, the
above example is irrelevant, and truthfully doesn't hold much meaning
when applied to Japanese.

One of the major problems of those learning to speak Japanese is the
tendency to cling to pronouns as if your life depends on them. The
Japanese *avoid* pronouns (and, for that matter, the subject of a
sentence) as much as possible. Generally, a pronoun should only be
used when first identifying the subject, and almost always only if
the subject is oneself. Also, from what I've seen (I may be wrong),
the only set of pronouns with clear gender definition is the first
person group. 

Let's say, for instance, I am introducing myself to someone.

"Watashi wa Morrison Robert desu. Watashi wa nijuusai desu." 

The above example, while technically correct, is stiff and awkward,
because of the overuse of personal pronouns. It is, for all intents
and purposes, Shampoo-speak. It also makes a poor first impression on
the person I'm introducing yourself to, because they get the
impression that I'm a gaijin who has barely learned the language well
enough to communicate. 

Assuming I don't need to be formal (which is a flawed assumption in
any first encounter with a Japanese person, but I digress), this is
how I would go about introducing myself properly:

"Boku wa Morrison Robert desu. Nijuusai desu." 

I've already clearly identified myself as the topic of conversation
in the first sentence. Therefore, it is unneccessary to reiterate the
subject for the second sentence, since both myself and the person to
whom I am speaking know that I am referring again to myself. 

Third-person pronouns, by the way, don't really seem to exist.
Instead of a definitive "he", "she", or "it", sentences referring to
a third party tend to start out with one of the following:

"Ano hito wa" (That person)
"Kono hito wa" (This person)
"Ano <noun> wa" (That <noun>)
"Ano <noun> wa" (This <noun>) 

This *can* be made to read as gender-specific, but only if you
replace "hito" with a gender-specific noun (ie "onna" or "otoko"). 

<whew> I think I've discoursed enough on the subject for now. As
always, if I've made an error somewhere and someone catches it,
please call me on it.

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