Japanese to romaji

Five ways to write Japanese in Latin letters

Japanese is written with two kana syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, together with kanji. Writing it in Latin letters is called romaji, or romanization (romanisation in British spelling), and several systems are in use. They agree on most syllables and differ on a handful of sounds, on long vowels and on the syllabic n. The converter above supports five.

• Hepburn: Modified Hepburn is a widely used romanization of Japanese, in the form set by the 3rd edition of Kenkyusha's Japanese-English dictionary (1954), and it marks long vowels with macrons.
• Trad. Hepburn: Traditional Hepburn is the romanization of Japanese in the 3rd edition of Hepburn's dictionary (1886), and it differs from modified Hepburn in details such as writing syllabic n as m before b, m and p.
• Passport: Passport Hepburn is the form of Hepburn that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan uses for names in passports, and it writes long vowels without macrons.
• Kunrei: Kunrei-shiki is the romanization of Japanese set by Cabinet notification in 1954 (first issued in 1937) and adopted as ISO 3602, and it follows the rows of the kana table, as in si, ti and tu.
• Nihon: Nihon-shiki is the strictly systematic romanization of Japanese devised by Tanakadate Aikitsu in 1885, and it keeps distinctions such as di, du and wo that Kunrei-shiki merges.

Use modified Hepburn for text meant for readers who do not know Japanese: it spells the sounds in a way that English speakers pronounce roughly right. Use passport Hepburn for a name that has to match a Japanese passport. Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki follow the structure of the kana table, so each row of the table keeps one consonant letter throughout. That makes them regular and systematic, and less intuitive for an English reader.

Kana to romaji charts

Every hiragana and katakana syllable with its spelling in Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki. The charts are generated from the converter's own data and tested against it, so a value in the chart is the value the tool gives. Most rows are identical in all three systems; the differences cluster in the s, t, h and z rows and in the combined syllables.

Passport Hepburn and traditional Hepburn use the Hepburn column for single kana, apart from を, which traditional Hepburn writes as wo. Where they differ is in whole words: long vowels, the syllabic n and the small tsu, all covered below.

Romaji rules, with worked examples

Single kana are only half the story. The spelling of a word depends on what surrounds each kana: a long vowel, a small tsu, or a syllabic n before a particular consonant. The sections below take these one at a time.

Every example is a word the converter is tested against, and each romanization in the tables is produced by the converter itself when this page is built.

Hepburn vs Kunrei-shiki vs Nihon-shiki

The table runs the same words through all five systems the converter supports. Read across a row to see where they agree, and down a column to see the habits of each system.

• Consonants: Hepburn writes shi, chi, tsu, fu and ji; Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki write si, ti, tu, hu and zi.
• Long vowels: a macron in modified and traditional Hepburn, a circumflex in Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki, no mark at all in passport Hepburn.
• The syllabic n before b, m and p: n in modified Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki; m in traditional and passport Hepburn.
• Kana that sound alike: only Nihon-shiki writes ぢ and づ as di and du; Nihon-shiki and traditional Hepburn write を as wo.

As a rule of thumb, choose modified Hepburn for readers, passport Hepburn for names on travel documents, and Kunrei-shiki or Nihon-shiki when a systematic, table-based spelling matters more than an English-friendly one. Whichever you choose, use one system throughout a text: mixing fuji and huzi in the same document looks like two different words.

Limits: kanji, particles and word breaks

The converter reads kana. Kanji are left exactly as they are, because the reading of a kanji depends on the word it appears in, and one character can have several readings. Write the word in hiragana or katakana first, then romanize it. In mixed text the kana parts are converted, the kanji stay in place, and a note says so.

Particles are the second limit. The particle は is pronounced wa and the particle へ is pronounced e, and Hepburn writes them that way, but kana alone cannot show whether a は belongs to a word or works as a particle. The converter writes ha and he and adds a note, so the greeting こんにちは comes out as konnichiha, which you would normally write konnichiwa.

Japanese also has no spaces between words. The converter keeps your spacing exactly, so a sentence typed without spaces comes back as one long string; add the spaces between words yourself. Finally, a long o written おう is sometimes not a long vowel at all but an o followed by a verb ending, and the converter flags such words for a check rather than guessing.

Japanese names and passport Hepburn

For a personal name, switch on names mode: each part separated by a space gets a capital letter, so やまだ たろう becomes Yamada Tarō in modified Hepburn.

Japanese passports use passport Hepburn, the form of Hepburn applied by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. It writes long vowels without macrons, so さとう ゆうこ is Sato Yuko. It writes ん as m before b, m and p, a small tsu before ch as t, and it drops the apostrophe after n, so じゅんいち is Junichi.

Because passport Hepburn leaves long vowels unmarked, it loses the difference between a long and a short vowel. When that difference matters, for example on a form that asks for the reading of a name, give the kana as well.

If you already have a passport, the spelling in it is the one to use on bookings and forms. The converter helps when you need to produce that spelling from kana, or to check one you have been given. For a list of names, the batch tool under the converter takes one name per line and gives you a CSV file.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Sources are given as plain references. The spellings in each source are the test cases the converter is checked against, and the kana charts on this page are tested against the converter.

• Modified Hepburn: Kenkyusha Japanese-English dictionary, 3rd edition (1954)
• Traditional Hepburn: Hepburn's dictionary, 3rd edition (1886)
• Passport Hepburn: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, romanization rules for passport names
• Kunrei-shiki: Cabinet notification (1954), first issued in 1937; adopted as ISO 3602
• Nihon-shiki: Tanakadate Aikitsu (1885)

Rules last verified: October 26, 2026. How the romanization engines are checked.

Related

New to the subject? What is romanization explains the idea and how the standards for each script compare. For Hangul, the Korean romanization converter covers Revised Romanization and McCune-Reischauer, and Russian, Ukrainian and other Cyrillic languages are on Cyrillic to Latin.