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Any research I try leads back to sites I don't know if I can trust, because
most of them are random fact articles. I've found an official site that has
some of the history, but not this specific fact. I also don't want to put much
stock in wikipedia, because while it is useful it can be edited by anyone for
whatever reason.
CC BY-SA 4.0
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question
history rōmaji
Is the first supposed invention of romaji in 1548 by a Japanese Catholic called Yajiro fact or fiction?
Well, as a hint, historically, the first people who'd have any interest in, or
practical need for, writing down Japanese in the Latin alphabet **weren't
Japanese people**. See the [**Nanban
trade**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanban_trade) article in Wikipedia for
a good jumping-off point to read about European contact with Japan. I'd bet
you dollars to doughnuts that the first Portuguese sailors who showed up in
1543 would have made at least a few notes about the local language -- and by
definition this would have been "romaji", after a fashion.

In terms of who made the first _systematic_ attempt at writing Japanese in the
Latin alphabet, that may have been a Portuguese priest by the name of
Francisco Xavier in 1549. At least, so says [this Encyclopedia Nipponica
article](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E5%AD%97-153358#E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E5.A4.A7.E7.99.BE.E7.A7.91.E5.85.A8.E6.9B.B8.28.E3.83.8B.E3.83.83.E3.83.9D.E3.83.8B.E3.82.AB.29)
(in Japanese). Frankly, I'd trust that more than the English Wikipedia
article. Wikipedia is great for many things, but due to its open, anyone-can-
edit setup, you sometimes get [Randy from
Boise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Randy_in_Boise) posting all
kinds of nonsense. Sometimes cross-checking against the same article in
another language can reveal silliness -- I see, for instance, that [the
Japanese Wikipedia article on
ローマ字](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E5%AD%97#%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E5%AD%97%E3%81%AE%E6%AD%B4%E5%8F%B2)
makes no mention of "Yajiro" in 1548.

I might be missing something, and someone named "Yajiro" may well have been
the developer of the first romanization system. But from what I can find right
now in a quick survey of materials, I don't think [the English Wikipedia
article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese) is correct.

* * *

**Update:** A bit more detail about the English Wikipedia article
[_Romanization of
Japanese_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese).

I did some digging in [the edit
history](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Romanization_of_Japanese&action=history).

  * The mention of Yajiro appeared all the way back on Halloween 2004 in [this edit](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Romanization_of_Japanese&diff=prev&oldid=7022851) by user Sekicho.
  * The edit includes no references and is unsourced, making it unfortunately dubious and useless for any further research -- we don't get any indication of where Sekicho got that information. For all we know, Sekicho heard that from someone in a bar one night.
  * Additionally, that [user's own page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sekicho) indicates that he is a native speaker of English, and an upper-intermediate learner of Japanese. This suggests that he may lack the skills needed to read Japanese-language reference materials.

In seeking to critically evaluate the source of the Yajiro information in
Wikipedia, and the likeliness of that information being correct, the signs are
not terribly promising. Considering also that the [Japanese Wikipedia
article](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E5%AD%97#%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E5%AD%97%E3%81%AE%E6%AD%B4%E5%8F%B2)
disagrees, as does the professionally produced [Encyclopedia Nipponica
article](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E5%AD%97-153358#E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E5.A4.A7.E7.99.BE.E7.A7.91.E5.85.A8.E6.9B.B8.28.E3.83.8B.E3.83.83.E3.83.9D.E3.83.8B.E3.82.AB.29),
I must judge the English Wikipedia to be **bogus**.

_(Full disclosure: I'm an editor at Wikipedia and Wiktionary. I have not
previously edited the_ [Romanization of
Japanese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese) _article,
but I will shortly to request a citation for this mention of Yajiro.)_

* * *

_Addendum:_ Sekicho's edit makes some historical mistakes, suggesting that the
use of `⟨ f ⟩` in Portuguese texts was merely a spelling convention. Academic
research into the history of the Japanese language instead interprets this
spelling as indicative of the actual pronunciation of the time. So modern
_Nihon_ was probably pronounced as _Nifon_ in the early 1600s.

There's also no mention of the important difference in treatment of long-"o"
vowels. All of those that developed from //au// were rendered in the
Portuguese orthography (spelling) of the time as `⟨ ǒ ⟩` (with a caron) and
all of those that developed from //ou// or //oo// were rendered as `⟨ ô ⟩`
(with a circumflex). Modern scholars interpret this as indicating that the two
vowel values were different, with `⟨ ǒ ⟩` probably pronounced as //ɔː// (like
English _awww_ ) and `⟨ ô ⟩` probably pronounced as //oː// (a regular "o"
sound). These two merged into plain //oː// some time over the last four
hundred years.
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answer