What does 本音 Honne mean?

Honne is what a person actually thinks. Its partner, 建前 (tatemae), is the position they hold in public because the situation calls for it. The pair is usually explained badly, and the bad explanation is worth dismantling first.

The characters

本 (hon) is true, main, or original, the same character in the word for a book and in words for the real version of something. 音 (ne) is sound. The true sound, as against the constructed front: 建前 is built from a verb meaning to build and a word meaning front.

The metaphors are architectural and acoustic, and neither implies deceit. A front is a structure, not a lie.

The explanation to avoid

These words are routinely offered as proof that Japanese communication is indirect, or that Japanese people say one thing and mean another. That framing is condescending and it is also unobservant, because the behaviour described is universal.

Anyone who has told a colleague their presentation was interesting, congratulated a friend on a decision they thought was unwise, or endured a family dinner without raising the obvious subject has produced a public position that differed from their private view. English simply has no compact pair of nouns for the two halves, so English speakers experience the gap without naming it.

What having the words changes

It makes the distinction discussable. A language with terms for both can say directly that a statement was a public position, without accusing anyone of lying, and can ask for the other one without it being an aggressive act.

English has to reach for insinuation to do the same work: what do you really think, off the record, between us. Each of those carries an implication that the earlier statement was somehow illegitimate, which the Japanese pair does not.

The genuine cultural claim, stated carefully

The defensible version is not that one culture has an inner and outer voice and another does not. It is that the ratio differs by situation and that expectations about when a public position is required are not identical across societies.

That is a claim about norms, it is testable, and it is far more modest than the version usually printed. The words themselves are evidence of vocabulary, not of character.