Hepburn for the win!

I’m sometimes critical of the choices made by Japanese authorities, so I must also acknowledge it when they do the right thing. For once, they are. Japan is officially dropping the Kunrei-shiki method of transcribing its language into the Roman alphabet to adopt the Hepburn system.

Let me explain if you’re not familiar with the whole thing.

When Japan opened up to the world in the 19th century, it soon became necessary to transcribe the Japanese language into the Roman alphabet due to the increasing number of foreigners coming to Japan. While there weren't many tourists yet, there were many officials and scientists. Many romanization systems were developed, but two became dominant.

The Hepburn system, designed by Mr. Hepburn, which is what English speakers usually use when writing Japanese words, and the Kunrei-shiki system (not designed by Mr. Kunrei-shiki 😉), which you may not have heard of unless you live in Japan.
Their difference?

The Hepburn system is designed to be as close as possible to the English pronunciation. It’s not perfect; some Japanese sounds don’t exist in English, but it’s as accurate as possible (but “ramen” is not pronounced in Japanese the way you might think, for example).
On the other hand, the Kunrei-shiki system is designed to be as logical as possible from a Japanese language perspective. However, it doesn’t care much about how a word written with this system would be pronounced in a foreign language. So, in short:

The Hepburn system is better suited to English speakers and other Westerners.
The Kunrei-shiki system is better for Japanese people.
The latter was adopted as the official way to romanize Japanese decades ago and has been taught to all Japanese people ever since. Of course, since it was designed by a Japanese national for Japanese people, it must be the best, right? (That's Japanese nationalism for you.)

Well, the government had overlooked one crucial aspect: who exactly needs to use romaji, and under what circumstances?

This may come as a surprise to you, but it’s usually not Japanese people who need to use Romaji (i.e., Japanese written in Roman characters), but foreigners.
However, in typical Japanese fashion, this fact didn’t seem to have occurred to any officials. A Japanese-designed Romanization system existed, it worked, what was there to complain about? Right?

But before I go any further, maybe I should explain how they’re different.

First, let me explain how Hepburn makes more sense to English speakers and Kunrei-shiki makes more sense to Japanese speakers.

Consider this set of Japanese phonological units, or kana: た, ち, つ, て, と. They are usually grouped together in Japanese; you'll understand why right away.
In Kunrei-shiki, they become ta, ti, tu, te, to. Logical, right?
In Hepburn, however, the set becomes: ta, chi, tsu, te, to.
Why? Because the pronunciation of ち is much closer to "chi" than "ti," and つ is actually pronounced "tsu," not "tu."
As you can see, one system is designed to help foreigners pronounce Japanese, while the other is designed to allow Japanese people to use the Roman alphabet without really taking phonology into account.

Here's another concrete example:
There's a beautiful island where I live called 小豆島. You can't read it? No problem. Let's romanize it.
In Kunrei-shiki, it's Syoudosima.
In Hepburn it’s Shodoshima.

Neither is a perfect transcription. The first "o" is a long "o" (sometimes transcribed as "ō" but I'll keep it simple and spare you the macrons), and the "sh" is not exactly the English "sh." However, the way you read the Hepburn transcription is much closer to the actual pronunciation than the Kunrei-shiki. However, the Kunrei-shiki is more logical for Japanese people.

Except that no Japanese person would ever write "Syoudosima." They will write "小豆島." Unless they're writing to foreigners. In that case, writing "Syoudosima" won't help at all, and it will only confuse their foreign correspondent.

So, is the Kunrei-shiki system basically useless?

Okay, there’s one caveat. Since all Japanese people learn Kunrei-shiki in school, they started using Romaji much more when computers became popular because that’s what they had to do to type on a computer. I don't know about the first home computers in Japan, but nowadays, computers accept both Kunrei-shiki and Hepburn. However, remember that most Japanese people hardly know Hepburn.

So that’s the mess the romanization of Japanese has been in for many decades. It got even worse when more and more Japanese people realized that foreigners needed Hepburn, while most Japanese still had no idea because they had little to no contact with foreigners in their daily lives.
Nowadays you can find things romanized one way or the other, which causes a lot of confusion.

Well, as I’m typing these lines (in March 2025), this confusing situation is almost over. The Japanese authorities have finally understood (after 150 years or so) that the primary goal of Romaji was to make Japanese readable for foreigners, so a system used only by Japanese people was pointless.
And Hepburn should now be the official way of romanizing Japanese

Better late than never.

Thanks for reading.

David