How is Japanese regulated by the Japanese government and any other organizations?


Some languages, but not English, have regulators such as the Académie
française (French Academy). Amongst other things, it decides whether or not
English words such as email, software and ウォークマン ought to be in the French
language, or should be replaced with French-derived terms like courriel,
logiciel and baladeur.

Wikipedia says the Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁) at the Ministry of
Education of Japan (文部科学省) plays a role in [language
regulation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators).
Previous questions have mentioned that the government has deprecated
[hentaigana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentaigana) and certain
[kanji](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/531/on-the-replacing-of-
kanji-obsoleted-in-the-1946-reforms-with-similar-looking-kan). Does any other
form of language regulation occur, either by the Japanese government, or
organizations theoretically independent of it?




文化庁 also publish guidelines on okurigana, the writing of gairaigo, and the use
of romaji. Those can be seen
[here](http://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/joho/kijun/naikaku/index.html).
Other documents
[here](http://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/joho/kijun/sanko/index.html)
include guidelines on the use of punctuation, iteration marks, etc.

There is also 国立国語研究所. Although they're researchers not regulators, they have
produced documents on how to reword difficult-to-understand gairaigo using
kanji terms ([「外来語」言い換え提案](http://www.ninjal.ac.jp/gairaigo/)).

Finally, the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee (日本工業標準調査会), through the
JIS X 208 and JIS X 0213 standards, has a big influence. If you can't (or
can't easily) enter/display certain characters on your computer/phone, that's
going to affect usage, even if you don't really care about government
standards and guidelines.

