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Japanese · History of writing

How kanji became kana

Hiragana and katakana were both cut out of Chinese characters: one by people writing poetry and letters, the other by monks reading Buddhist texts.

7 min readUpdated 28 Oct 2026Level: beginner

On this page · Writing arrives from China
  1. Writing arrives from China
  2. Man'yōgana: kanji for sound
  3. Hiragana: the brush shortens
  4. Katakana: monks' reading marks
  5. One sound, one shape (1900)
  6. Sources

Before the 5th century Japan had no writing of its own. Chinese characters, which Japanese calls kanji, came across the sea through the Korean kingdoms, along with Buddhism, Confucian texts and the scribes who could read them. For a long time "writing" in Japan meant writing Chinese.

That worked for laws and records, but not for Japanese itself. The two languages are unrelated. Chinese words are single syllables that don't change; Japanese words take endings, and its grammar hangs on small particles like は, を and に that Chinese simply doesn't have. To write a Japanese sentence, people had to borrow characters for their sound instead of their meaning.

Man'yōgana: kanji for sound

The clearest record of this is the Man'yōshū, a collection of about 4,500 poems compiled in the 8th century. Its scribes wrote many words with characters chosen only for how they sounded: 安 for a, 加 for ka, 以 for i. Characters used this way are called man'yōgana, after the book. It worked, slowly: one syllable cost a whole character, and a reader had to guess which characters meant something and which only sounded.

Source kanjiHiraganaSource kanjiKatakanaSound
安あ阿アa
以い伊イi
宇う宇ウu
加か加カka
左さ散サsa
太た多タta

The same sound often came from different characters, and sometimes from the same one. う and ウ both come from 宇, one by smoothing the whole character, one by keeping its top.

A horizontal scroll of the Man'yōshū: columns of brushed kanji, with small red annotations.
The Man'yōshū, Nishi Honganji manuscript. One of the oldest complete copies of the collection, written in kanji throughout. Nishi Honganji-bon, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Hiragana: the brush shortens

A section of the illustrated Tale of Genji scroll: flowing hiragana over a decorated paper ground.
Genji Monogatari Emaki, 12th c. Hiragana text from the illustrated Genji scroll. Genji emaki, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Written fast with a brush, man'yōgana blurred into cursive. By the 9th century, at the Heian court, the cursive shapes had become a script of their own: 安 became あ, 以 became い. Letters, diaries and poetry were written in it, and because official writing stayed in Chinese, it was known as onnade, "women's hand".1

The great prose of the period is in kana. Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, from the early 11th century, is written mostly in hiragana, and the illustrated scrolls made of it a century later set the kana text beside the paintings.

Katakana: monks' reading marks

Meanwhile, in Buddhist temples, monks reading Chinese sutras needed to note how to read them in Japanese: endings, particles, the order of words. Writing whole characters in the narrow space between columns was impossible, so they wrote parts of characters. The left side of 伊 became イ; the top of 宇 became ウ. These angular fragments are katakana.2

Chart of hiragana, each under the kanji it was simplified from, with the intermediate cursive form.Chart of katakana beside their source kanji, with the part each katakana keeps shown in red.
Both kana, from their source characters. Left: each hiragana under the kanji it was simplified from. Right: each katakana, with the part of the kanji it keeps shown in red. A few pairs, like か/カ from 加, share a source.Left: Hiragana origin, CC BY 2.5. Right: Katakana origine, CC BY-SA 3.0. Both via Wikimedia Commons.

One sound, one shape (1900)

For most of their history the kana had many variant shapes for each sound, from different source characters. In 1900 the government fixed one hiragana and one katakana per sound for schools. The others survive as hentaigana, still seen on old-style shop signs, especially for soba. A 1946 reform then brought kana spelling closer to modern pronunciation.

Today hiragana writes grammar and native words; katakana writes loanwords and anything a writer wants to stand out, the way English uses italics. Both still carry the outline of the character they came from.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, Man'yōgana: man'yōgana, the origins of hiragana and katakana, and the source kanji of each kana.
  2. Wikipedia, Hentaigana: the 1900 standardisation of one kana per sound, and variant kana on soba-shop signs.
  3. Wikipedia, Japanese script reform: the 1900 kana reform and the 1946 modern kana spelling (gendai kanazukai).

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