James Curtis Hepburn

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The Reverend Dr James Curtis Hepburn (13 March 1815–11 June 1911) was born in Milton, Pennsylvania. He attended Princeton and Pennsylvania universities and became a doctor. He decided to go to Siam (later changing to China) as a medical missionary, but had to stay in Singapore for two years as 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.

In 1859, he decided to go to Japan as a medical missionary, where he opened a clinic in Kanagawa and later a school (the Hepburn School, from which the present Meiji Gakuin University developed.) He also began compiling a Japanese-English dictionary, which was first published in 1867. The third edition of his dictionary, published in 1887, used a revised form of Japanese romanization devised by society of enthusiasts for writing Japanese in the Latin alphabet. This form of romanization is now known as Hepburn romanization, and it is aften said that Hepburn invented it, although it appears that he just adopted the newly proposed system. He also contributed to the translation of the Bible into Japanese. Hepburn returned to the US in 1892, and died in East Orange, New Jersey in September of 1911 at the age of 96.

Some of Hepburn's noted Japanese pupils include Furuya Sakuzaemon and Numa Morikazu.