Romaji Converter (Hiragana/Katakana ↔ Romaji)

This converter turns Japanese hiragana and katakana into romaji, or turns romaji you type into kana. Pick modified Hepburn (the system on most signs, passports and textbooks), traditional Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki (ISO 3602, long taught in Japanese schools) or Nihon-shiki, and choose how long vowels appear: Tōkyō, Tookyoo or Toukyou. Everything runs in your browser.

How to use this tool

1. Paste kana or type romaji; the direction is detected automatically.
2. Choose the romanization system.
3. Choose how long vowels should be written.
4. Keep the particle option on to read は, へ, を as wa, e, o when they stand alone.
5. For romaji input, choose hiragana or katakana output and copy the result.

Formula

Kana are read in units (a kana, or a kana plus small ゃ, ゅ, ょ, ぁ …), then: っ doubles the next consonant (っち → tchi in Hepburn), ん becomes n' before a vowel or y, and o+う, o+お, u+う, a+あ, e+え or ー become one long vowel.

Hepburn writes し shi, ち chi, つ tsu, ふ fu, じ ji; Kunrei-shiki writes si, ti, tu, hu, zi and sya, tya, zya. Nihon-shiki also keeps ぢ di, づ du and を wo. Traditional Hepburn writes ん as m before b, m and p (shimbun) and を as wo. Romaji input follows Japanese keyboard input habits: nn → ん, doubled consonant → っ, x or l → small kana.

Example

とうきょう becomes tōkyō in modified Hepburn, tookyoo with doubled vowels and toukyou as spelled. しんぶん is shinbun in modified Hepburn and shimbun in traditional Hepburn. Typing kyouto gives きょうと, and shinbun with katakana output gives シンブン.