Where did the "W" come from?

Seriously, I tried researching this, and couldn't find any answers - it's like no one is even curious, everyone just accepts it as fact.

I could let it go, if it was just some random english-speaking dude; so they botch their name in a weird way and think they're a great artist. Whatever.

But this is a JAPANESE individual, which raises a whole different Pandora's Box of worms. Um.. opens a.. never mind, if they can both their name this badly and impossibly, I can botch some sayings.

In Japan, they don't generally use what they call 'Roumaji' (ローマ字） much. To them, western alphabet is just something distant that they sometimes use when they want to learn english, and understand that foreigners (外人） can't always understand japanese writing, so they try to use it in situations involving them, and they know how to read japanese language written in english alphabet, but it's not a normal, everyday situation for them, and for the most time, they don't think about 'japanese language written in english or Roman alphabet'.

This has lead to all kinds of powers, forces and entities screwing up what COULD be a very phonetic, useful and kana-like （ひらがな　+　カタカナ） way of 'transliterating' japanese language universally, but isn't.

Any japanese language student soon learns that Roumaji is completely MESSED UP. Never try to write japanese in Roman alphabet, or your mind will grind its teeth painfully until something snaps.

Japanese are blissfully oblivious to what has been done to their language not only in Japan, but over the seas as well. They don't care what people do to Roman alphabet, as long as kana and kanji remain the same.

The problems arise when japanese people try to write their own language in Roumaji, and then 'foreigners' that might be used to completely different writing system, or the logic of kana, or perhaps understand phonetics, try to read it.

Japan officially uses many different kinds of Roumaji, including the horrible 'Kunrei-Shiki'. I don't know why so many people messed with it and made it worse, but Hepburn is the only 'somewhat viable' way of writing japanese in Roumaji, the only one that at least tries to fit the sounds with the writing, and mimic how japanese is written in kana.

"Mitsubishi" (みつびし） and "Densha"　（でんしゃ） are Hepburn.

It's perfectly fine in hiragana, as you can see. But when you start using Kunrei-Shiki or the american Roumaji or whatnot, because of the weird way english is pronounced completely differently than how it's written (foreigner's perspective), or the way english pronunciation changes based on what other letters are around the letter (native speaker's perspective), something like 'oh' can look acceptable to native speakers. (It is not)

Japanese have NO problem writing "Mitubisi" and thinking it's correct. I once wrote both words and asked which is correct, they said 'both look correct to me'.

I couldn't believe it.

Densha is often written as "Densya". This makes no sense, because although it's "De (で）　ｎ　（ん）　shi (し）　(small ya) (ゃ）, which means that 'shi ya' is contracted into 'sha'.

Listen to ANY japanese individual pronounce 'Densha' and you don't hear the 'ya' or 'y'-sound AT ALL, you just hear 'sha'. It should definitely be 'sha', but clueless translators keep 'Densya' in the name archives because they asked some japanese about it and that's how they decided to write it in Roumaji.

Remember that japanese people don't know or care about Roumaji, they write it ANY which way. What makes it stupider, is that they're taught the wrong (Kunrei-Shiki) in school, so they learn that first, THEN later on, they're taught Hepburn, but by that time, their brain already knows only 'Kunrei-Shiki', so they don't bother changing anything anymore, especially since they don't care about Roumaji and don't use it in their daily life.

This leads to situations where foreigners who don't understand japanese, ASK japanese people, and get horribly mutilated, incorrect Roumaji, and think it MUST be correct, since the source was a REAL JAPANESE individual.

I am telling people all of this only to show that Roumajization of Japanese is COMPLETELY BUTCHERED and messed up, and japanese people should NEVER be relied upon to know the correct Roumaji. It's not THEIR business to know it, and they don't care. To them, it's not REAL japanese language, so it doesn't matter how it's written. Kana and Kanji is real japanese to them.