Kunrei-shiki romanization
In 1930, the Ministry of Education appointed a board of inquiry to determine the proper romanization system of the Japanese language.This resulted in a cabinet order (訓令 kunrei) issued on 21 September 1937[2] that a modified form of the Nihon-shiki system would be officially adopted as Kunrei-shiki.[5] After Japan's defeat in the Pacific War in 1945, General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), issued a directive, dated 3 September 1945, that stated that Modified Hepburn was the method to transcribe Japanese names.[8] During the postwar period, several educators and scholars tried to introduce romanized letters as a teaching device and a possible later replacement for kanji.[9] Eleanor Jorden, an American linguist, made textbooks with a modified version of Kunrei-shiki, which were used in the 1960s in courses given to US diplomats.In January 2024, the Cultural Affairs Agency proposed revising the 1954 Cabinet Order to make Hepburn the standard romanization system of Japan."[6] Because Kunrei-shiki is based on Japanese phonology rather than the actual phonetic realization, it can cause non-native speakers to pronounce words incorrectly.[17][page needed] The most serious problem of Hepburn in this context is that it may change the stem of a verb, which is not reflected in the underlying morphology of the language.