Japanese continues to have plenty of "ultrapolite linguistic elements". However, there are many formerly polite pronouns for "you" that have, over time, become blunt or outright rude: omae, temae > temee, kisama, etc.

These transitions can also be rapid: my mother-in-law calls me otaku without a hint of irony, since that was a perfectly polite term until it was suddenly adopted to refer to sociopathic geeks in the wake of the Tsutomi Miyazaki murders in 1989. Like many people in her age group, she never got the memo on this.