By the 20th century, there were a number of different romanisation systems used to transliterate Japanese into Latin characters. These include the Nippon, Kunrei and Hepburn systems.
The Hepburn system (hebon-shiki) was devised by James Curtis Hepburn (1815-1911), an American missionary from Philadelphia. who arrived in Japan in 1859 and compiled the first modern Japanese-English dictionary about a decade later. The Hepburn system is now the most widely used romanisation system.
The Kunrei system (kunreishiki "Cabinet Ordinance system") was promulgated by the Japanese government during the 1930s. A revised version was issued in 1954.
The main differences in spelling between the Kunrei and Hepburn systems are as follows (Hepburn in brackets): si (shi), ti (chi), tu (tsu), hu (fu), zi (ji), sya (sha), syu (shu), syo (sho), tya (cha), tyu (chu), tyo (cho), zya (ja), zyu (ju), zyo (jo) and so on.
The Nippon system (nipponshiki) was the creation of Tanakadate Aikitsu and was first used in 1881. It is identical to the Kunrei system except for the sounds da, di, du, de, do, dya, dyu, dyo, which are written da, zi, zu, de, do, zya, zyu, zyo in the Kunrei system and da, ji, zu, de, do, ja, ju, jo in the Hepburn system.
www.yamasa.org content is created and maintained by Declan Murphy and the studentsand staff of the Yamasa Institute's Multimedia Studio. This site is Yamasa - All rights reserved.