In December 2025, the Japanese government revised its rules for writing Japanese in the Roman alphabet for the first time in about 70 years, adopting Hepburn-style romanization (Hepburn-shiki) as the basic system in place of Kunrei-shiki.
The romanization used in official documents and school education will gradually be changed accordingly.
A change to the way Japanese is written may sound like a major news story. In practice, however, the impact on everyday life is not particularly large.
That is because many of the romanized forms we see every day in Japan—on train station signs, road signs, passports, and tourist information—have already been written using Hepburn-style romanization.
In other words, for many people, a system they are already familiar with has simply become the official basic standard.
This small news story offers an opportunity to introduce a foreigner whose name almost every Japanese person has heard at least once.
What Is the Difference Between Kunrei-shiki and Hepburn-shiki?
Before getting to him, it may help to explain what has actually changed.
The fundamental difference between Kunrei-shiki and Hepburn-style romanization is whether the system prioritizes the structure of Japanese or readability for people who do not know Japanese.
Kunrei-shiki
The name Kunrei-shiki comes from the Japanese word kunrei (訓令), meaning an official instruction or directive issued by the government.
Kunrei-shiki is a logical system based on the regularity of the Japanese gojūon, or traditional Japanese syllabary.
- sa-row: sa, si, su, se, so
- ta-row: ta, ti, tu, te, to
Japanese sounds are converted into Roman letters according to a regular system.
Hepburn-shiki
Hepburn-style romanization, on the other hand, places more emphasis on whether someone unfamiliar with Japanese can look at the letters and guess the Japanese pronunciation.
For example:
| Japanese sound | Kunrei-shiki | Hepburn-shiki | English spelling example |
|---|---|---|---|
| し | si | shi | ship |
| ち | ti | chi | cheese |
| つ | tu | tsu | tsunami |
| ふ | hu | fu | food |
| しゃ | sya | sha | shark |
| ちゃ | tya | cha | chance |
| ちゅ | tyu | chu | choose |
| ちょ | tyo | cho | chocolate |
| じゃ | zya | ja | jam |
| じゅ | zyu | ju | June |
| じょ | zyo | jo | job |
Note: The English examples are not exact pronunciation equivalents. They simply illustrate familiar spelling patterns.
Hepburn-style romanization uses spelling patterns familiar to English speakers as clues, making it easier for them to guess how a Japanese word is pronounced.
Why Is Kunrei-shiki Less Intuitive for Foreigners?
Imagine showing an English speaker the following Japanese words.
| Japanese | Hepburn-shiki | Kunrei-shiki | |
|---|---|---|---|
| すし | Sushi | Susi | |
| 富士 | Fuji | Huzi | |
| こんにちは | Konnichiwa | Konnitiwa | |
| 千葉 | Chiba | Tiba |
Kunrei-shiki is very easy to understand for people who know the structure of Japanese. But what about someone who does not?
Hepburn-style romanization is designed to make Japanese easier to read for someone who does not know Japanese.
Put another way, Kunrei-shiki can be seen as a system for converting Japanese into Roman letters, while Hepburn-style romanization can be seen as a system designed to help people read Japanese from Roman letters.
That does not mean Kunrei-shiki is useless. Because its structure is so systematic, it can be very convenient for things such as Japanese keyboard input.
Japanese computer keyboards generally use the Roman alphabet. To type Japanese kana, we enter sounds using romanized forms, and the computer converts them into Japanese characters.
Modern Japanese input systems generally accept both Kunrei-shiki and Hepburn-style input.
Personally, when typing Japanese, I use si rather than shi, and ti rather than chi. I also use tya rather than cha.
But interestingly, I do not use Kunrei-style spelling for everything. I type ja, ju, and jo rather than zya, zyu, and zyo.
The consonants remain consistent, and there are fewer keystrokes, so this feels more natural to my hands.
But if the goal is to have people around the world read Japanese, the situation is different. The advantage of Hepburn-style romanization is hard to deny.
The Foreigner Behind “Hepburn”
So, who exactly was this “Hepburn”?
He was James Curtis Hepburn, an American physician who left a major mark on Japan in the 19th century.
There is something interesting about his surname, too.
Hepburn is written as ヘボン (Hebon) in Japanese.
The same surname, Hepburn, is usually written ヘプバーン (Hepubān) when referring to the actress Audrey Hepburn.
The difficulty of representing a foreign name in Japanese is, in a way, illustrated by the name “Hepburn” itself.
Born in the United States in 1815, Hepburn came to Japan in 1859, at the age of 44, as a medical missionary, shortly after Japan opened to the outside world.
He opened a medical clinic in Yokohama and treated many Japanese patients while introducing Western medicine and beginning to learn Japanese.
He would walk around the city, point at things he saw, and ask, “What is this?”
That was how his Japanese studies began.
For Hepburn, romanization was not a way of beautifully organizing the Japanese syllabary.
It was a practical tool that allowed a foreigner like himself to read, pronounce, and understand Japanese.
Hepburn did not come to Japan with the intention of creating a romanization system. He himself was a foreigner who had to learn Japanese from scratch.
From “What Is This?” to a Dictionary
In 1867, after years of enormous effort learning Japanese, Hepburn published A Japanese and English Dictionary, known in Japanese as Waei Gorin Shūsei, together with Japanese collaborators.
The romanization system used in this dictionary became the basis of what would later be called Hepburn-style romanization.
The Japanese words he collected by asking “What is this?” eventually became a systematic dictionary.
And his system of writing Japanese went on to become a tool not only for Japanese people learning English, but also for foreigners learning Japanese.
From Dictionary-Making to Education
 |
| Meiji Gakuin University Shirokane campus |
The school he established in Yokohama, known as Hepburn-juku, later developed into an institution that eventually became Meiji Gakuin University.
A bronze statue of Hepburn still stands on the university's Shirokane campus in Tokyo.
A university dormitory built through Hepburn's donation was once known as Hepburn-kan. The original Western-style building was later destroyed by fire, but the name lives on today in the name of a campus building.
A Name That Remained in Japan for 150 Years
Station signs. Road signs. Passports.
And the information signs seen by travelers visiting Japan from around the world.
The system of writing Japanese that Hepburn used has become deeply rooted in Japanese society over the past 150 years.
For foreigners living and traveling in Japan.
And for Japanese people writing their language for the rest of the world.
The government's latest rule change may be a small administrative adjustment. But when we follow the story behind it, we can see an American who came to Japan knowing little Japanese and learned its words one by one by asking, “What is this?”
The system he used to read Japanese was gradually adopted by others, and more than 150 years later, it became the basic standard of Japan's official romanization rules.
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