Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-73.220.89.40-20150318192417/@comment-26486243-20160109092559

Basically the image KDKW needs to portray to the public is not necessarily what they wanted something to be. They cannot and will not ever declare Abyssals to be the Allies, and from a PR point of view will do whatever is needed to keep the intended identity of the Abyssals as ambiguous as possible. But to say that Allied ships are unlikely to appear as playable ships will be an understatement. Inasmuch as the tatemae is declared explicitly, the honne is communicated implicitly. Even if KDKW was pressured into releasing playable Allies, it would alienate a significant section of their player base.

KDKW/DMM's policy on allowing gaijin to play KanColle is also similar. The tatemae is that KanColle service is restricted to Japanese IPs. The honne is in their inaction to fix very easily circumvented (and easily fixed) loopholes in the region restriction system. The impression must always be that gaijin who are playing have gotten around the restrictions, never that they are freely allowing gaijin to. When communicating with KDKW, gaijin who expect any help with anything are expected to follow the tatemae by communicating exclusively in Japanese, or else you will never get a response. The honne will be in that even if your Japanese is at such a obviously horrendously bad level that you cannot be anything but a gaijin, they will still respond as if you are a domestic player.

It's somewhat complicated to explain, but the difference between the honne-tatemae dichotomy and the truth-lie dichotomy gaijin are more familiar with is that in the latter, someone who lies has the intent to deceive the listener, while in the former, someone who uses tatemae does not have any intent to - but wants to communicate the true message in an unspoken form beneath the veneer of a socially acceptable exterior. The listener is expected to respond as if literally responding to the exterior, while replying with an unspoken indication to the original sender that the unsaid communication is acknowledged. Some gaijin Japanese Studies professors display an obvious lack of understanding the system in their published papers, but if you ever want to get anywhere in understanding Japan, you must tackle this at some point or be forever stuck outside the façade.