Kunrei-shiki
Kunrei-shiki (Jp: 訓令式, romanized Kunrei-siki in Kunrei itself) is a romanization system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Roman alphabet. Originally promulgated by a September 21, 1937 cabinet order (Jp. 訓令 kunrei) and decreed again in a second cabinet order dated December 29, 1954, it is the system officially sanctioned by the Japanese Ministry of Education (文部省 Monbushō) and is thus also known as the Monbushō system. Kunrei-shiki is also known as ISO 3602, as it was approved by the International Standards Organization as a common romanization method for the language.Despite this, it is much less widespread in use than Hepburn romanization, and is mostly used within Japanese primary schools. The system is a compromise between Hepburn, which stresses conformity with English phonology, and Nihon-shiki, which stresses one-to-one correspondence with the kana system, but it is much closer to the latter. This makes it easier for Japanese to learn, but generally more difficult for non-Japanese, with unintuitive renderings like Huzi for 富士 "Fuji" and zyÃÂûzyutu for 柔術 "jujutsu".
Kunrei is also poorly suited for some newly created kana like ティ and フィ, as used in loanwords like パーティ "party" and フィルム "film". In Hepburn these would be represented as pāti and firumu, giving a good indication of the pronunciation, but Kunrei already has a "ti" reserved for the Hepburn sound chi and does not allow for a separate "f" sounds. Hence, for ティ the only solution is to use an apostrophe, pÃÂât'i, and for フィ the correct Kunrei is hwirumu.
Long vowels are represented by a circumflex in the modern system, although the older Kunrei-shiki specification called for macrons.
See rōmaji for a comparison of romanization systems.