James Curtis Hepburn (; March 13, 1815 – September 21, 1911) was an American physician, translator, educator, and lay Christian

missionary A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

. He is known for the Hepburn romanization system for transliteration of the Japanese language into the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

, which he popularized in his Japanese–English dictionary.

Background and early life

Hepburn was born in Milton,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, on March 13, 1815. He attended

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

, earned a master's degree, after which he attended the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, where he received his

M.D. Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated M.D., from the Latin ''Medicinae Doctor'') is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a professional degree. ...

degree in 1836, and became a physician. He decided to go to China as a medical missionary, but had to stay in Singapore for two years because the Opium War was under way and Chinese ports were closed to foreigners. After five years as a missionary, he returned to the United States in 1845 and opened a medical practice in New York City.

Missionary work in Japan

In 1859, Hepburn went to Japan as a medical missionary with the American Presbyterian Mission. After first arriving in Nagasaki in October 1859, Hepburn swiftly relocated to the newly opened

treaty port Treaty ports (; ja, 条約港) were the port cities in China and Japan that were opened to foreign trade mainly by the unequal treaties forced upon them by Western powers, as well as cities in Korea opened up similarly by the Japanese Empire. ...

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

, opening his first clinic in April 1861 at the Sokoji Temple. Initially residing at Jobutsuji in

Kanagawa is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kanagaw ...

, a dilapidated temple formerly occupied by the Dutch consulate, Hepburn was the first Christian missionary to take up residence close to the newly opened treaty port. Hepburn's family shared accommodation at Jobutsuji with Dutch Reformed minister Rev. Samuel Robbins Brown and all were quickly absorbed into the local foreign community, Hepburn being appointed honorary physician to the US Consul,

Townsend Harris Townsend Harris (October 4, 1804 – February 25, 1878) was an American merchant and politician who served as the first United States Consul General to Japan. He negotiated the " Harris Treaty" between the US and Japan and is credited as the d ...

. Hepburn's first clinic failed as the

Bakumatsu was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji governm ...

authorities, wanting the missionaries to relocate to Yokohama, put pressure on patients to stop going to it. In the spring of 1862 Hepburn and his family relocated to the house and compound at Kyoryuchi No. 39, in the heart of the foreigners residential district in the treaty port of Yokohama. There, in addition to his clinic, he and his wife Clara founded the Hepburn School, which eventually developed into Meiji Gakuin University. Hepburn's Japanese pupils included Furuya Sakuzaemon, Takahashi Korekiyo, and Numa Morikazu ( 沼間守一). For his medical contributions to the city of Yokohama, Hepburn Hall was named in his honor on the campus of Yokohama City University School of Medicine. In May 1867, with the collaboration of his long-time assistant Kishida Ginkō, Hepburn published a Japanese–English dictionary which rapidly became the standard reference work for prospective students of Japanese. In the dictionary's third edition, published in 1886, Hepburn adopted a new system for

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...

of the Japanese language developed by the Society for the Romanization of the Japanese Alphabet ('' Rōmajikai''). This system is widely known as the Hepburn romanization because Hepburn's dictionary popularized it. Hepburn also contributed to the translation of the Bible into Japanese.

Later years

Hepburn returned to the United States in 1892. On March 14, 1905, a day after Hepburn's 90th birthday, he was awarded the decoration of the Order of the Rising Sun, third class. Hepburn was the second foreigner to receive this honor. He died on September 21, 1911, in East Orange,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, at the age of 96. He is interred in Orange's Rosedale Cemetery.

Publications

* (first edition) 690pp
A Japanese and English dictionary: with and English and Japanese index (1867)Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary (1881)
* (4th edition), 962pp (gives Japanese next to romaji)
A Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionary (1903)
* (2nd. ed. abridged), 1032pp (romaji only)

References

External links

History of Meiji Gakuin UniversityHepburn Christian Fellowship
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hepburn, James Curtis American expatriates in Japan American Japanologists Presbyterian missionaries in Japan Presbyterian missionaries in Singapore American lexicographers Translators of the Bible into Japanese 1815 births 1911 deaths Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd class 19th-century American physicians People from Northumberland County, Pennsylvania 19th-century American translators American Presbyterian missionaries University and college founders Missionary linguists