Kurusu on romaji

Senior Lecturer Kenichiro Kurusu gave his lecture, “What the ‘Fourth Writing System’ Reveals about Japanese” last 25 March as the first installment of the 2026 Talks on Asian Languages (TAL) at Palma Hall Room 428. Among the members of the audience were Japanese language students, linguistics majors, and language educators. 

“How would you transcribe 大阪 into hiragana?” Kurusu said, opening his presentation with a question about the romanization of one of the largest cities in Japan. Possible transcriptions include Oosaka, Ōsaka, and Osaka – the choice depends upon the romanization system being used. He then proceeded to focus on the syllables し (shi), ち (chi), つ (tsu), and ふ (fu), which also may have varying romanizations. 

The history of romaji

As Kurusu presents, romaji may refer both to the writing system based on the Latin script, or the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script. He explains that other languages have different romanization systems, while romaji is used specifically for Japanese. Roma comes from the term for Italy, while ji means script.

“If we talk about the history of the writing system in Japanese, it dates back to the first century – almost 2000 years ago.” He then notes that the history of romaji parallels the history of the writing systems in the Philippines, emphasizing the interaction with foreign cultures. Around the 16th century, the Latin alphabet was introduced in Japan, through European missionaries who documented the country’s culture and history.

Kurusu then discussed past attempts at only using romaji instead of kanji and kana, as it was proposed that this would lead to better dissemination of information. However, these previous endeavors were not successful. One of the highlighted factors was lexical ambiguity, as there are homophones in the language which would be harder to differentiate without kanji characters. 

The different styles

“We should probably talk about two major systems: one is Hepburn system or Hepburn-shiki in Japanese […] established in 1867 […] and kunrei-shiki, which was based on the nihon-shiki and was established in 1885 to replace the Hepburn style,” Kurusu explains. The first of the two systems is based on English orthography, and phonetically represents the sounds in the language, while the latter was later adapted by the government as a replacement for the Hepburn style. Kunrei-shiki was also declared as the official romanization system in 1955, and the writing system was characterized by its 1:1 relation with the kana writing system. Most Japanese people, according to Kurusu, are familiar with kunrei-shiki. 

Linguistics and romaji

Kurusu then proceeds to present romanization through the lens of linguistics, using the terms complementary distribution, palatalization, and affrication. Complementary distribution describes two sounds which occur in mutually exclusive instances, palatalization is when sounds are uttered with the tongue being more forward, and affrication is when the created noise is not a sudden burst but is instead a continuous one.

The current situation

“More than 90% of users who type in Japanese use the romaji input, while only about 5% use the kana input,” Kurusu says, explaining the current situation of the four writing systems in Japan. Furthermore, the two romaji styles are both still being utilized today, and the usage varies across domains and speakers. For example, names in passports are written in the Hepburn style, while road and store signages use either of the two. JR train signages are meanwhile in the kunrei-shiki, reflecting the companies’ past of being a government institution. Other train companies however sometimes use the Hepburn system. 

In the context of baseball, a rule of representing the long o vowel sound as oh is observed, which is not in either the Hepburn-shiki or the kunrei-shiki. 

Kurusu ended his talk with emphasizing the cultural significance of romaji: “The romaji system has been used for more than 400 years now in Japan, and as we saw, it reflects the historical changes in the language as well.”

A full recording of Ken-sensei’s talk may be viewed at the Department’s official YouTube channel. Continue following our website and social media sites for updates on future events and installments of the Talks on Asian Languages!