Sensei in Japanese

Sensei (先生) is a generic Japanese term for "master", "teacher" or "doctor". It can be used to refer to any authority figure, such as schoolteacher, professor, priest, lawyer, or politician. It can be used on both genders.

Sensei is most commonly used in a school, by both students and teachers and is considered a more friendly term than calling him or her by the family name plus sensei. A male teacher Ichiro Tanaka would initially be called "Tanaka Sensei" by his students and after a while, students switch to "Sensei" or "Ichiro Sensei" depending on how Tanaka sensei would like to be called. Fellow teachers may call each other sensei after getting familiar, but when they consider each other friends, they usually start calling each other by the family name alone, the first name, or by a nickname. Females are more likely to call each other by the first name after becoming friends.

Sensei of martial arts usually live and/or work at a dojo, where they teach their skills to their apprentices. However, such teachers, especially in fictions written by and for Japanese, are more commonly referred to as Shishō (師匠) or Shihan (師範). As both of them are usually translated as master, using sensei would be considered derogatory and insulting. In an humor filled fiction or as a comic relief, such masters would make a comical appeal that their students must call them shisho and not sensei. It is mostly forgotten or ignored by their students.

In Sanbo Kyodan related Zen schools, sensei is normally used to refer to ordained teachers below the rank of roshi. However, other Zen Buddhists use the term for any priest regardless of seniority.

See also: O-sensei

Xiansheng in Chinese

The Japanese expression sensei derives from the Chinese word Xiansheng, which is written with the same characters. Xiansheng is a courtesy title for a man of respected stature; its English equivalent is gentleman. It can also be attached to a man's name to mean "Mr." Prior to the development of the modern vernacular, Xiansheng was used to address teachers of both male and female sexes; however, this has fallen out of widespread usage.

In both Japanese and Chinese, it literally translates into "one who was born prior".