What’s the difference between a mistress and a lover? Even though the word “love” seems more profound in “mistress,” why is “lover” considered more legitimate than “mistress”? Thank you.

Maezawa from the CEO’s office will answer as well. Thank you for your question. I’ll leave the precise interpretation of the original Japanese to those more knowledgeable, but in terms of the general image: “Love” (*koi*) is a feeling you have in your youth—essentially wholesome dating, without a physical relationship. “Love” (*ai*) is a feeling you develop as an adult, involving not only your heart but a willingness to give your body and soul, so it includes a physical relationship. So, because *ai* carries more weight and therefore implies a physical relationship, I feel that the word “lover” (*aijin*) eventually became established with the physical aspect being emphasized. In other words, you can be lovers even without a physical relationship (though it can also include one), but being someone’s *aijin* doesn’t really work without a physical relationship. And because our education system has taught us that having a physical relationship is somehow improper—physical relations used to be called “impure relations between the sexes”—I wonder if people gradually became conditioned to think of it like this: A lover is legitimate. An *aijin* is immoral. Originally, though, I feel that being an *aijin* may have been considered legitimate as well...

I’m Kazu, a male member. If I remember correctly, in one of Osamu Dazai’s works, a woman who was a mistress referred to herself as a “lover,” and that apparently sparked the shift in meaning. Originally, “lover” was supposed to mean the same thing as “romantic partner.” I looked it up. It was Kazuko, a woman in Osamu Dazai’s *The Setting Sun*: “I am a mistress. (I can hardly bear to use that word, but even if I called myself a lover, in common terms I would still be nothing but a mistress, so I’ll say it plainly.) And I don’t mind that.”