Japanese 'え' sound - [ɛ] or [e]?


OK, this has been driving me nuts. My friend and I have been learning Japanese
off and on for many years, though neither of us are fluent. We got into an
argument about the pronunciation of 'え'.

My textbooks said it was an English "short e" as in "bet" or "step." In my
opinion, that's the IPA [ɛ]. That's how I've always pronounced it (unless it's
a long ええ and then I use [e:]).

My friend was pronouncing it like the Spanish "e", closer to the English "long
a" sound (although not a diphthong) and like the IPA [e].

The [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Japanese) on this
is inconsistent. It says it's the IPA [e] sound as in American English "bet,"
but that is definitely not the way I or anyone I know pronounces bet! Here's
"bet" in [wikitionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bet#English), agreeing
with me.

When I play clips of Japanese audio and listen closely, I hear [e] in some
words and [ɛ] in others. What the heck is going on here? Is there any kind of
rule, does it vary by speaker, does no one notice or care?

This difference is very noticeable to me when my friend is pronouncing it.
Possibly she's Englishizing the vowel a little bit. When listening to native
speakers, I have to focus slightly to hear the difference, but it's still very
obvious. What gives?




Japanese, a language which has 3-level vowel height system, does not have the
distinction of //e// and //ɛ//. Or speaking more correctly, Japanese え and お
are (true) mid vowels, that their sweet spots fall just midway of theoretical
[[e]] and [[ɛ]]. (We write them [[e̞]] and [[o̞]] in IPA if necessary.)

[![Japanese
vowels](https://i.stack.imgur.com/z3slH.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/z3slH.png)

(chart from
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Vowels))

And as far as the Standard Japanese concerned, there is no conditional
allophone (that you must pronounce exactly //e// in some cases and //ɛ//
other), so you may hear the sound //e// or //ɛ// **totally randomly** ,
because it is in the range of ordinary fluctuation.

IPA symbols were created for Western European languages in mind, where 4-level
height system is prevailing. Compare the
[Italian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_phonology#Vowels) (4-leveled)
and [Spanish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_phonology#Vowels)
(3-leveled like Japanese) vowel diagrams.

[![Italian
vowels](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OnSq3.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OnSq3.png)[![Spanish
vowels](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XOEsS.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XOEsS.png)

