Nipponica

The agency is recommending replacing the government’s long-standing Kunrei system with more widely used Hepburn-style spellings. The changes are expected to be approved within the current fiscal year and gradually rolled out in textbooks and other materials.

Under the Kunrei system, codified by Cabinet notification in 1954, phonemes for ち and ふ are written as ti and hu. Most Japanese schools still teach the style in romanization studies.

But the Hepburn system, which renders them as chi and fu, has become dominant both in Japan and abroad, making the impact of the change likely most evident in educational materials such as school textbooks.

The council’s recommendation also adopts Hepburn spellings for し, じ and つ as shi, ji, and tsu, compared to the Kunrei spellings of si, zi and tu. It specifies that double consonants, as in てっぱん, should be written by repeating the consonant, while long vowels such as in かあさん can be indicated with either a macron (kāsan) or doubled letters (kaasan).

It is about a century too late but in Japanese time scales, pretty speedy. On a conceptual level I understand why Kunrei did what it did, but practically it only led to confusion for non-Japanese readers. Hepburn über alles.

Firefighting efforts on the ship, anchored near White Beach Naval Facility in the city of Uruma in Japan's southern island prefecture, involved U.S. Navy personnel as well as support from the Japan Coast Guard and the Maritime Self-Defense Force.

Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki expressed his deep frustration over the incident, warning at a press conference that it could have led to "a major disaster involving residents."

Americans making messes overseas. Just another day.