Japanese negative response words include “iya,” “ie,” “iie,” and “uun.” The exchange of Japanese negative
response words changes depending on the setting and the relationship between the speaker and the hearer
including gender differences. However, previous studies so far have used biased data for women and none
have analyzed gender differences. Therefore, in this study, I reexamined the negative response words in
the data for gender and investigated whether gender differences appear there. As a result, I discovered that
there was a difference in negative response word used between men and women. Negative response words
tended to be used more between people of the same sex. On the contrary, in the use of negative response
words in terms of the sex of the hearer, there are fewer women who used negative response words to
address men, while men used more negative response words to address women.