Japanese To Romaji

Romaji is essentially the romanization of Japanese using the latin alphabet to write the Japanese language. There are a few unique romanization systems, but only one is mainly used in Japan today. A brief history of how Romaji came to be will follow:

Japanese is normally written in characters or symbols borrowed from Chinese syllables, Romaji is most commonly used for applications targeted to the non-japanese, like street signs, passports, documents that will be transfered across borders or over the internet, etc. All Japanese individuals who have gone to elementary school since World War II have been taught japanese to romaji simultaneously, so all individuals since then have been taught both languages and how to translate them, speak them, write them, so that they are available to use it any time that it may be necessary.

The earliest Japanese romanization of the japanese language was based on the Portuguese language. It was developed around 1548. This became necessary due to a japanese religious movement, the christization of japanese people into the Jesuit faith. Members of the japanese-christian groups created and used the system of romaji to print and distribute large amounts of christian texts to the japanese people. The incorporation of this system made it possible for the christian missionaries to be able to preach and teach their japanese congregation and churches without having to learning to speak, read or write traditional japanese and it's complicated use of many symbols, emotions and subjects that would be very confusing to a non-japanese speaker.

After the christian missionaries were routed and banished from Japan in the 1590s and the language of romaji became rusty and disused, for several hundred years it was hardly ever spoken or read, used only in very few illegal, at the time that is, religious texts. That is, until Japan opened up again after World War II. The Romaji system was rediscovered and brought back into use in order to simplify communication with non-Japanese speakers, such as in the political and diplomatic uses needed after the major war. Once again, the teaching of japanese to romaji is commonplace in schools all across japan, so that communication overall may be simplified between speakers, writers and readers. Romaji is used in many word processors and in documents that are fed into computers, since many computers cannot recognize traditional japanese characters used in japanese writing, these symbols or syllables are closer to an image than any text most programs on computers are written in or programmed with are often unrecognizable to the machines. These machines and programs require the romanized version, closer to english than Japanese, in order to compute japanese text.