mimashita

Mimashita is the polite past tense form of the Japanese verb miru (見る), which means to see, look at, or watch. It is used in formal or respectful speech to indicate that someone saw or watched something in the past. The plain past tense of miru is mita, while the polite past is mimashita.

As a ru-verb (ichidan), miru conjugates by adding polite endings to the stem mi-. The present polite form is mimasu, and the past polite form becomes mimashita. The corresponding negative forms follow the same pattern in polite speech, for example, minai would be the plain negative, while minimasen deshita is the polite past negative. The verb can take a wide range of direct objects, such as "ei-ga o mimashita" (I watched a movie), or be used with sensory contexts like "soko de hito o mimashita" (I saw people there).

Mimashita is commonly used in everyday conversation, news reports, and media subtitles to report past visual actions. It can be followed by noun phrases or clauses to specify what was seen, and it appears in questions like "Mimashita ka?" to politely ask whether someone saw something. In informal speech, the plain past mita is used instead of mimashita, but mimashita remains standard in polite contexts.

See also: Japanese verb conjugation, miru (to see), polite speech forms, past tense in Japanese.