Nihon-shiki romanization

transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, it is the most regular one and has an almost one-to-one relation to the kana

Aikitsu Tanakadate (田中館 愛橘) in 1885,^[1] with the intention to replace the Hepburn system of romanization.^[2] Tanakadate's intention was to replace the traditional kanji and kana system of writing Japanese completely by a romanized system, which he felt would make it easier for Japan to compete with Western countries. Since the system was intended for Japanese people to use to write their own language, it is much more regular than Hepburn romanization, and unlike Hepburn's system, it makes no effort to make itself easier to pronounce for English-speakers.^{[citation needed}

Hepburn-shiki should be used by the Japanese government.^[1] Kunrei-shiki is nearly identical to Nihon-shiki, but it merges syllable pairs di/zi ぢ/じ, du/zu づ/ず, dya/zya ぢゃ/じゃ, dyu/zyu ぢゅ/じゅ, dyo/zyo ぢょ/じょ, wi/i ゐ/い, we/e ゑ/え, kwa/ka くゎ/か, and gwa/ga ぐゎ/が, whose pronunciations in Modern Standard Japanese are now identical. For example, the word かなづかい, rendered kanadukai in Nihon-shiki, is pronounced as kanazukai in modern Japanese, and is romanized as such in Kunrei. The International Organization for Standardization has standardized Kunrei-shiki, under ISO 3602. The JSL system, which is intended for use instructing foreign students of Japanese, is also based on Nihon-shiki. However, some Japanese-speakers still distinguish di from zi and du from zu