感情
かんじょう
kanjou
= emotion; feelings
感情 (kanjou) is the Japanese word for emotion — feelings as a whole, treated as a category rather than one particular mood. It is the term you reach for when talking about emotions in the abstract: managing them, expressing them, or trying to keep them in check.
感情 covers emotions and feelings as a concept. You will see it in 感情を表す (kanjou wo arawasu, ‘to express emotion’), 感情を抑える (kanjou wo osaeru, ‘to suppress emotion’), and 感情表現 (emotional expression). With 的 it becomes the adjective 感情的 (kanjou-teki, ‘emotional’), which usually carries a negative tint — 感情的になる means to get worked up, to let feelings override reason.
It helps to place 感情 against 気持ち (kimochi). 気持ち is warmer and more personal — your feelings, your mood right now, as in 気持ちがいい (‘feels good’). 感情 is more clinical and abstract, the kind of word a psychologist, a novelist, or an HR manual would use. So you comfort a friend by asking about their 気持ち, but you discuss how humans regulate their 感情. There is also 気分 (kibun), which is closer to a passing mood or physical sense of how you feel.
One practical warning: 感情 has a common homophone, 勘定 (kanjou), which means a bill, check, or calculation (お勘定 is asking for the restaurant check). They are read identically but written with completely different kanji and are unrelated in meaning, so context — and the characters — tell them apart.
Choose between 感情 and 気持ち carefully. To say ‘thanks, that made me happy’, use 気持ち-based, personal language; reserve 感情 for talking about emotions, as in 感情のコントロール (controlling one’s emotions).
Remember that 感情的 usually sounds critical. Telling someone 感情的にならないで (‘don’t get emotional’) implies they are losing their cool, so it is not a neutral observation.
And don’t be thrown by hearing kanjou at a restaurant — お勘定お願いします is 勘定 (the bill), not 感情 (emotion). The shared reading is a classic trap for learners, but the situations rarely overlap.
Formal / Cultural context
仕事中は感情を表に出さないように気をつけている。
Shigoto-chuu wa kanjou wo omote ni dasanai you ni ki wo tsukete iru.
At work I’m careful not to let my emotions show.
Casual / Social Media
つい感情的になって、言い過ぎてしまった。
Tsui kanjou-teki ni natte, iisugite shimatta.
I got emotional despite myself and said too much.
Everyday use
日本語は感情を表す言葉がとても豊かだと思う。
Nihongo wa kanjou wo arawasu kotoba ga totemo yutaka da to omou.
I think Japanese has a really rich vocabulary for expressing emotions.
感情 connects to a much-discussed feature of Japanese social life: the value placed on not letting raw emotion spill out in public. The cultural ideal of keeping 感情 in check links to the wider 建前 and 本音 distinction — the public face versus true feelings — and to a general preference for composure. Openly 感情的 behavior in a formal setting can be read as a loss of self-control.
That restraint does not mean feelings go unspoken; it means they are often channeled with care. Japanese offers an unusually large toolkit for naming subtle emotional states, and the culture prizes reading the air (空気を読む) — sensing others’ 感情 without them being stated outright. Emotion is communicated, but frequently through indirectness, timing, and context rather than blunt declaration.
The word also appears in modern work-life discussions as 感情労働 (kanjou roudou, ‘emotional labor’) — jobs, from service staff to caregivers, that require managing one’s own 感情 and projecting the right feeling for customers. Its presence in that vocabulary shows how 感情 functions as the serious, analytical term for emotion, the one used to think and talk about feelings rather than simply to voice them.