Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6192846-20150613141203/@comment-23.122.217.39-20150819223817

Ah, my bad. I misunderstood what you were saying.

The Letter She Kept Waiting for in particular is one where the context stated it was about her rather from her perspective (ie, from the third person of someone talking about her), hence why the "She" rather than "I". I can't speak for the other example, or other's you've heard, however.

My more strict interpretation is because I have seen this point on omitted subjects several times, even outside of my classroom learning. The situation I am referring to in class was one where I personally believed I had set out the context for a third person subject, yet it was read in first person because I didn't use the subject particle. This leads me to believe that it's an assumption prominent in Japanese approach to sentences, and thus it's not intended to be as vague as "we're sure someone heard the song but we're not sure who" as leaving it subjectless would be in English. As we know that the subject who heard the song is the speaker, it makes no sense to me to put anything but "I".

Ultimately I suppose it's not up to me but that's my perspective.