Kana

is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji (Chinese characters).

is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji).

are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, kana most commonly refers to hiragana and katakana. It can also refer to their ancestor , which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. ''man'yōgana); and hentaigana'', which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana.

is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid-7th century. The name "man'yōgana" derives from the ''Man'yōshū, a Japanese poetry anthology from the Nara period written with man'yōgana.''

is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana (syllabic characters) printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known as and in Japanese. In modern Japanese, it is usually used to gloss rare kanji, to clarify rare, nonstandard or ambiguous kanji readings, or in children's or learners' materials. Before the post-World War II script reforms, it was more widespread.

In the Japanese writing system, are variant forms of hiragana.

are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way. For example, the plain verb form (miru, "see") inflects to past tense (mita, "saw"), where is the kanji stem, and る and た are okurigana, written in hiragana script. With very few exceptions, okurigana are used only with kun'yomi (native Japanese readings), not with on'yomi (Chinese readings), as Chinese morphemes do not inflect in Japanese, and their pronunciation is inferred from conte

{| align=right style="margin-left:1em;" |- | {| class="wikitable" align=right style="vertical-align:top;padding:2px;" |+ ordering(hiragana) |- ! !! a !!| i !!| u !!| e !!| o |- align=center !title="no lead consonant"|∅ ||||||||| |- align=center !K ||||||||| |- align=center !S ||||||||| |- align=center !T ||||||||| |- align=center !N ||||||||| |- align=center !H ||||||||| |- align=center !M ||||||||| |- align=center !Y |||bgcolor="#A7A79F"| ||||bgcolor="#C0C0C8"| || |- align=center !R |||||||||| |- align=center !W |||bgcolor="#E0E0E8"|||bgcolor="#A7A79F"| ||bgcolor="#E0E0E8"||| |- ! colspan="6"

thumb|190px|The word (, ) written vertically with vertical chōonpu The , also known as , , , or Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark by the Unicode Consortium, is a Japanese symbol that indicates a , or a long vowel of two morae in length. Its form is a horizontal or vertical line in the center of the text with the width of one kanji or kana character. It is written horizontally in horizontal text and vertically in vertical text (ー). The is usually used to indicate a long vowel sound in katakana writing, rarely in hiragana writing, and never in romanized Japanese. The is a distinct mark from

The is a Japanese symbol in the form of a small hiragana or katakana , as well as the various consonants represented by it. In less formal language, it is called or , meaning "small ". It serves multiple purposes in Japanese writing.

Unicode block (U+30A0-30FF)

basic calligraphic component needed to draw CJKV characters used in East Asia

Unicode block (U+31F0-31FF)

character denoting the repetition of the previous syllable or more within a word, possibly with a implicit or explicit phonologic modification

Unicode block (U+FF00-FFEF); for the classification of these special form variants, use Q905566

The is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added sound, i.e., palatalized, or (more rarely in the modern language) with an added sound, i.e. labialized.

thumb|right|350px|Different regions distinguish different sets of sounds. Using [[Nihon-shiki romanization:

classification of East Asian (CJKV) characters in a computer terminal font; for the Unicode block, use Q3513222

use of Japan's syllabic scripts in pre-modern time

writing system for Taiwanese Hokkien based on katakana, used during the colonial era (1896–1945)

Japanese diacritic signs used with Kana characters to modify the voicing of consonants

archaic kana orthography system used to write Japanese during the Nara period

use of Japan's syllabic script in contemporary times

thumb|Chart showing various Japanese characters in their ''man'yōgana, sogana (red) and hiragana'' forms.

kana ligature representing multiple syllables; e.g. ヿ for "koto", 𬼀 for "shite", 𪜈 for "tomo", ゟ for "yori", 𬼂 for "nari"