It is often said that Japanese doesn't really have a pronoun word class, such as in the Wikipedia article on Japanese Grammar:
Although many grammars and textbooks mention pronouns (代名詞 daimeishi), Japanese lacks true pronouns. (Daimeishi can be considered a subset of nouns.) Strictly speaking, pronouns do not take modifiers, but Japanese daimeishi do: 背の高い彼 se no takai kare (lit. tall he) is valid in Japanese. Also, unlike true pronouns, Japanese daimeishi are not closed-class: new daimeishi are introduced and old ones go out of use relatively quickly.
Of course, it is also often said that Japanese does have pronouns.
What arguments are used to answer this question? Does it stem from a lack of agreement over how to define a pronoun? If so, under which definitions does Japanese have and not have pronouns?
Pronoun
is an open class in Malay; and personal relations have sufficient importance in Malay culture (as in Japanese) that the safest and threfore by far the most common allomorph of all pronouns -- first, second, and third persons -- is Zero; i.e, you figure it out from context. This leaves the lexical pronouns as special cases. – jlawler May 5 '15 at 17:24