GoKawiilJapan Makes 19th-Century Hepburn System Its Official Romanization Standard
In December 2025, the Japanese government formally adopted Hepburn romanization as the national standard for writing Japanese in the Latin alphabet, marking the first update to romanization rules in roughly seventy years. Hepburn, popularized by missionary James Curtis Hepburn in an 1867 dictionary but originally developed by a scholarly group called the RÅmaji-kai, transcribes Japanese sounds so English speakers can approximate correct pronunciation just by reading the letters.