Hepburn romanization


Hepburn romanization is the most widely-used system of romanization for the Japanese language. Published in 1886 by American missionary James Curtis Hepburn, it uses consonants that approximate those in English and vowels that approximate those in Italian. The "modified Hepburn system", also known as the "standard system", was published with revisions in 1908.
Although Kunrei-shiki romanization is the style favored by the Japanese government, Hepburn remains the most widely-used method of Japanese romanization. It is learned by most foreign students of Japanese, and is used within Japan for romanizing personal names, locations, and other information such as train tables and road signs. People who speak English or Romance languages will generally be more accurate in pronouncing unfamiliar Japanese words romanized in the Hepburn style compared to other systems.

History

In 1867, American missionary James Curtis Hepburn published the first modern Japanese–English dictionary. In 1886, he published the dictionary's third edition, which popularized a version of his system with input from an international commission consisting of Japanese and foreign scientists. In 1908, the Society for the Propagation of Romanization, led by educator Kanō Jigorō, published a version of the Hepburn system with revisions, which is known today as the "modified Hepburn" or "standard system".

Legal status

Hepburn is based on English phonology and has competed with the alternative Nihon-shiki romanization, which was developed in Japan as a replacement of the Japanese script. In 1930 a Special Romanization Study Commission was appointed to compare the two. The Commission eventually decided in favor of a slightly-modified version of Nihon-shiki, which was proclaimed to be Japan's official romanization for all purposes by a September 21, 1937, cabinet ordinance; it is now known as the Kunrei-shiki romanization. The ordinance was temporarily overturned by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers during the Occupation of Japan, but it was reissued with slight revisions in 1954.
In 1972 a revised version of Hepburn was codified as ANSI standard Z39.11-1972. It was proposed in 1989 as a draft for ISO 3602 but rejected in favor of the Kunrei-shiki romanization. The ANSI Z39.11-1972 standard was deprecated on October 6, 1994.
As of 1978 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and many other official organizations used Hepburn instead of Kunrei-shiki. In addition The Japan Times, the Japan Travel Bureau, and many other private organizations used Hepburn instead of Kunrei-shiki. The National Diet Library used Kunrei-shiki.
Although Hepburn is not a government standard, some government agencies mandate it. For example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requires the use of Hepburn on passports, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport requires the use of Hepburn on transport signs, including road signs and railway station signs.
In many other areas that it lacks de jure status, Hepburn remains the de facto standard. Signs and notices in city offices and police stations and at shrines, temples and attractions also use it. English-language newspapers and media use the simplified form of Hepburn. Cities and prefectures use it in information for English-speaking residents and visitors, and English-language publications by the Japanese Foreign Ministry use simplified Hepburn as well. Official tourism information put out by the government uses it, as do guidebooks, both local and foreign, on Japan.
Many students of Japanese as a foreign language learn Hepburn.

Variants

There are many variants of the Hepburn romanization. The two most common styles are as follows:
In Japan itself, there are some variants officially mandated for various uses:
Details of the variants can be found below.

Obsolete variants

The romanizations set out in the first and second versions of Hepburn's dictionary are primarily of historical interest. Notable differences from the third and later versions include:

Second version

The following differences are in addition to those in the second version:
The main feature of Hepburn is that its orthography is based on English phonology. More technically, when syllables that are constructed systematically according to the Japanese syllabary and contain an "unstable" consonant in the modern spoken language, the orthography is changed to something that better matches the real sound as an English-speaker would pronounce it. For example, is written shi not si.
Some linguists such as Harold E. Palmer, Daniel Jones and Otto Jespersen object to Hepburn since the pronunciation-based spellings can obscure the systematic origins of Japanese phonetic structures, inflections, and conjugations. Supporters of Hepburn argue that it is not intended as a linguistic tool.

Long vowels

The long vowels are generally indicated by macrons. Since the macron is usually missing on typewriters and people may not know how to input it on computer keyboards, the circumflex accent is often used in its place.
The combinations of vowels are written as follows in traditional/modified Hepburn:

A + A

In traditional and modified:
In traditional Hepburn:
In modified Hepburn:
In traditional and modified:
In traditional and modified:
In traditional and modified:
In traditional Hepburn:
In modified Hepburn:
In traditional and modified:
In traditional and modified:
In traditional and modified:
All other combinations of two different vowels are written separately:
The long vowels indicated by chōonpu within loanwords are written with macrons as follows:
The combinations of two vowels within loanwords are written separately:
There are many variations on the Hepburn system for indicating the long vowels. For example, can be written as:
In traditional and modified:
In traditional Hepburn:
In modified Hepburn:
In traditional Hepburn:
In modified Hepburn:
Elongated consonant sounds are marked by doubling the consonant following a sokuon, ; for consonants that are digraphs in Hepburn, only the first consonant of the set is doubled, except for ch, which is replaced by tch.
These combinations are used mainly to represent the sounds in words in other languages.
Digraphs with orange backgrounds are the general ones used for loanwords or foreign places or names, and those with blue backgrounds are used for more accurate transliterations of foreign sounds, both suggested by the Cabinet of Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Katakana combinations with beige backgrounds are suggested by the American National Standards Institute and the British Standards Institution as possible uses. Ones with purple backgrounds appear on the 1974 version of the Hyōjun-shiki formatting.