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How did “little tsu” become a lengthener?
On Wikipedia and elsewhere, Japan is written like so: Nippon ( にっぽん ).
What is that tsu doing in there? Why isn't it represented in the romaji rendering of the name?
Answer
The つ character you're talking about is commonly referred to as "little つ" and looks like っ. This characters is not actually pronounced, but rather it means to take a small pause.
In the case of にっぽん, instead of pronouncing it as "nitsupon", you would be pronouncing it like "ni [small pause] pon" which is romanised as "nippon" which has a natural pause between the two 'p's.
But like sawa said in a comment, this is a very basic thing in Japanese and you would have learnt this from a textbook's first chapter.
For a more complete explanation though, you can visit the wikipedia page on it.
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