After 71 years, the Cabinet is ready to do something just about everyone else did several decades ago.
Sometimes the wheels of Japanese government turn slowly. Very, very slowly. As an example, way back in 1954 the Cabinet of Japan said “Hey, everybody, please use the Kunrei romanization system for writing Japanese words and names in the Latin alphabet,” and it’s taken more than 70 years to fix what feels like a pretty obvious mistake.
To be fair, at the time, being less than 10 years removed from the end of World War II, the Japanese government probably had more pressing reconstruction projects to deal with, so it’s understandable if linguistic policy wasn’t a major priority for careful consideration. Still, it doesn’t take a master-level knowledge of languages to realize that the Kunrei system, which says that sushi should be spelled as “susi,” futon as “huton,” and Shinjuku as “Sinzyuku,” does a very, very poor job of conveying how those words are actually pronounced. And yet, for the seven decades since, the Cabinet has stuck by its request for Kunrei romanization.
Last year, though, a subcommittee of the Cabinet’s Council for Cultural Affairs finally realized that the Hepburn system of romanization, the one that says “sushi,” “futon,” and “Shinjuku” are the correct spellings, would be the better choice. Considering that the Hepburn system is already the basis for the way the vast majority of serious linguists and genuinely internationally focused Japanese organizations write things, this seemed like a no-brainer, but here we are, more than a year and a half later, and the Cabinet still hasn’t made an official endorsement of the Hepburn system.
▼ Though a fine actress and dedicated humanitarian, Audrey Hepburn was not involved in the creation of Hepburn romanization. The system was developed by James Curtis Hepburn (pictured in statue form at the top of this article), an American physician, educator, missionary, and linguist who came to Japan in 1859.
That’s finally going to change next week, though, according to sources citing a Cabinet meeting held on Tuesday, in which the decision was made to officially announce on December 22 that Hepburn romanization is the new preferred choice of the Cabinet.
Though it’s a decision that took 71 years to make, the course correction probably won’t have that dramatic an effect. That’s because the Cabinet’s romanization recommendations aren’t legally binding, as evidenced by the way most linguistically knowledgeable individuals and organizations ignored the Kunrei recommendation with aplomb. The change will, however, remove one of the only imaginable reasons someone could have for purposefully choosing the Kunrei system over Hepburn, so if it convinces even a few old-fashioned company managers and civil servants who stubbornly clung to Kunrei because “It’s what the Cabinet tells us to do!” to finally change their tune/spelling, that’s a good thing.
Another difference between Kunrei and Hepburn romanizations is in the style of explicitly denoting elongated vowel sounds, with Kunrei using circumflex accent (basically a little upwards-pointing arrow) over the vowel, and Hepburn using a macron (a horizontal line) there instead.
However, in actual practice a modified version of the Hepburn system is often used that does away with macrons, which is why “Tokyo” is a much more common rendering than Tōkyō (ditto for “ramen” instead of “rāmen”). Among Kunrei holdouts, it’s even less common for the circumflex accent to be included, and many travelers and expats would be hard-pressed to remember ever encountering the rendering Tôkyô.
In the absence of a macron, the strict Hepburn system would alternatively call for a doubling-up of the elongated vowel (or occasionally a U added after an elongated O), such as Tookyoo, raamen, or juudou. However, the Cabinet acknowledges that certain spellings that don’t completely conform with the orthodox Hepburn rules have already become widely accepted and recognized, and so it has no plans to swim against the currents of those linguistic streams. Because of that, we can also expect to see the northeastern region of Japan continue to be Tohoku instead of changing to Touhoku, for example. The Cabinet also says that it will be respectful of the wishes of rendering the names of individuals and organizations, so it won’t be sending a message of congratulations to “Shohei Ootani” the next time Shohei Ohtani does something incredible in the world of professional baseball.
Once more, it’s important to remember that while the Cabinet can make recommendations about romanization, its word isn’t law on the matter, even within the Japanese government itself, as the majority of official English-language documents and signage have already been using Hepburn for decades. So no one is going to be going to prison or having government funding pulled for failing to follow the Cabinet’s recommendation, but at least the change will serve as an extra encouragement to make Japanese words easier for foreigners to understand and pronounce, which is the whole point of romanization.
Source: Nihon Keizai Shimbun
Top image: Wikipedia/Аурелиано Буэндиа (edited by SoraNews24)
Insert images: Wikipedia/0m9Ep, SoraNews24
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