How to write Japanese words in English
1. Apart from the names of places and people, Japanese words, like other words of foreign origin, will normally be indicated by italics. However, this does not apply to words such as "samurai" and "karaoke" that are so familiar that they have been accepted as part of the English language and have entries in standard English-English dictionaries.
2. Japanese words do not normally have a plural form, so there is no need to add "s". For example:
3 There are two different ways to romanize Japanese (write it using the
roman alphabet), but they are often mixed up. Fresh confusion is caused
by techniques used when word-processing Japanese. A common mistake would
be "Shinzyuku", or even "Shinnzyuku" for 新宿.
4. The official romanization system (kunreisiki) follows the way in which Japanese is written with kana. For example, し is written as si, しゃ is written as sya (si + ya), じゅ as zyu (zi + yu), and 新宿 as "Sinzyuku". Even though this is the official system,
however, it is not that widely used, probably because it does not help
foreigners to pronounce Japanese correctly.
5. The second way is a revised form of Hebonshiki, the system developed by the pioneer Protestant missionary James Hepburn
in the mid-nineteenth century. This system follows the pronunciation of
Japanese, rather than kana usage. To take the same examples as above, し is written as shi, しゃ as sha, じゅ as ju, and 新宿 as "Shinjuku".
6. Note that in both systems, the particles (助詞) は, へ, and を are written
wa, e and o.
A table showing both systems (from Okayama Rika Daigaku) can be found here.
7. You should also note the following:
Long vowels such as ああ and おう can be written in various ways. Most people who use revised Hebonshiki ignore them; for example, they romanize both お and おう as o. However, you can write a line ( ¯ ) over the vowel (a macron) either
using your computer, if you have software that can manage this, or by hand
afterwards. Alternatively, you can write two vowels (aa, oo). However, even though the long oo sound is normally written in Japanese as おう, and you have to input o + u when using a computer, you should write oo not ou. This is because ou is normally pronounced "ow" in English, and therefore confuses
the reader.
Similarly, it is sometimes necessary to input an extra "n", so
that, for example, Kurosawa Akira's 七人のさむらい does not become 七人おさむらい.
However, this should be romanized as Shichinin no samurai rather than Shichininn no samurai.
When ん comes before あ, い, う, え, お, and や, ゆ, よ, an apostrophe
(') is used to indicate the break in sound. For example, 潤一郎 becomes
Jun'ichiro, and 信也 becomes Shin'ya.
8. The final problem is where to put in breaks between "words",
and whether to use hyphens instead. For example, you might come across
both Kindai Nihonshi no nazo, Kindai Nihon shi no nazo and Kindai Nihon-shi no nazo as romanisations of the imaginary book title 近代日本史のなぞ. There is a long
explanation of what the Library of Congress does here, but unless you are told to follow this system, or another one, I think
it is enough to use common sense and be consistent.
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