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Both words mean "beautiful woman", but I guess the reason two words exist is
because of some nuance. Am I right ?
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2018-10-02T23:23:17.707
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word-choice words
What is the difference between 美人 and 佳人?
From super daijirin:

> び-じん [1][0] 【美人】
>
> 美しい容貌の女性。美女。麗人。
>
> 〔古くは，男子もさした。「玉のやうなる―，…もらひまして聟にいたします/浮世草子・胸算用 2」〕

(Woman of beautiful appearance. In old times, was used for boys too.)

...

> か-じん [1][0] 【佳人】
>
> 美しい女の人。

(A beautiful woman)

...

Also note the small differences between the kanji meanings (from jisho.org):

美: beauty, beautiful

佳: excellent, beautiful, good, pleasing, skilled

...

Also note the different contexts that show up when you look for example
sentences:

美人: <https://ejje.weblio.jp/sentence/content/%E7%BE%8E%E4%BA%BA>

佳人: <https://ejje.weblio.jp/sentence/content/%E4%BD%B3%E4%BA%BA>

By comparing the example sentences, 佳人 seems more poetic and much less common.
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2018-10-02T23:26:58.843
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I see no semantic difference, but 佳人 is an uncommon outdated word. On BCCWJ,
there are over 2000 instances of 美人 and only 28 instances of 佳人, most of which
are part of certain old book titles (incl.
[佳人之奇遇](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BD%B3%E4%BA%BA%E4%B9%8B%E5%A5%87%E9%81%87))
or idioms (incl.
[佳人薄命](https://jisho.org/word/%E4%BD%B3%E4%BA%BA%E8%96%84%E5%91%BD)). If you
said 佳人 in casual speech, the listener probably wouldn't even understand it.
On the other hand, on [青空文庫検索](https://www.joao-roiz.jp/AOZORA/), there are
many instances of 佳人 from novelists of the 19th century. So unless you want to
write something stiff mimicking the writing style of old novelists, you should
not use 佳人. (BTW there is also 麗人, which is equally rare)
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2018-10-03T03:05:14.770
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According to the dictionary, it seems that 佳人 can only refer to a woman, while
美人 may also refer to a man.  
<https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/40900/meaning/m0u/>  
<https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/286724/meaning/m0u/>
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2018-10-03T15:17:42.553
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Not a native language speaker, but I've seen a phrase in a Chinese historical
romance (set in ancient times) that went something like this: meiren (美人) is
easy to find, jiaren (佳人) is difficult to seek. Which in this context I
interpreted as meiren referring to outer, superficial beauty--i.e. anyone who
is very very pretty suffices to be called it. Whereas jiaren requires beauty
at a deeper level--i.e. someone who is not beautiful merely in that skin-deep
sense.

I think the difference in nuance might be of relevance only in an ancient
setting, when language was much more complex, and more laden with subtle and
hidden meanings. In modern novels, I've rarely if ever seen jiaren be used;
and if it were used, it would probably be used interchangeably with meiren,
more or less.

That's my two cents.
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