The soft, rounded script born in the Heian court — click any character below to watch its stroke order, learn a mnemonic, and meet the kanji it descended from.
Hiragana grew out of man'yōgana, the Nara-period system of using Chinese characters purely for their sound. Heian court scribes — and especially women, who were largely excluded from formal Chinese scholarship — gradually simplified those characters into fast, flowing cursive shapes. The result earned the nickname onna-de, "women's hand," and within a generation it had produced The Tale of Genji, widely considered the world's first novel.
Every hiragana character today traces back to one specific man'yōgana kanji, abbreviated through centuries of handwriting into the rounded, flowing forty-six-character set still taught to every Japanese schoolchild. It wasn't formally standardized until 1900 — before that, multiple cursive variants for the same sound, called hentaigana, coexisted and were used somewhat interchangeably, some of which still appear today on traditional shop signs and soba-noodle restaurant noren.
Native Japanese grammar — verb endings, particles, and any native word without an assigned kanji.
46 base characters, each representing one full syllable sound rather than a single letter.
Soft, rounded, flowing strokes — the cursive descendant of brush-written kanji.
Tap or click any character in the grid below to see its stroke order animate, plus its mnemonic and origin.
Look at the character. Try to recall the romanization, then reveal.
Two small marks and a handful of combination characters extend hiragana to cover every sound in Japanese. A dakuten (゛) added to certain consonants voices the sound — か (ka) becomes が (ga). A handakuten (゜), used only on the h-row, turns h into a crisp p sound — は (ha) becomes ぱ (pa). All dakuon and handakuon characters, plus yōon combinations and long vowel patterns, are now included in the grid above.
| Base | + dakuten | Base | + dakuten | Base | + handakuten |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| か ka | が ga | さ sa | ざ za | は ha | ぱ pa |
| た ta | だ da | は ha | ば ba | ひ hi | ぴ pi |
Small versions of や, ゆ, and よ combine with an i-row character to form a single blended yōon (拗音) sound — き + small ゃ becomes きゃ (kya), not "ki-ya" said quickly, but one true syllable. A small っ (sokuon, 促音) before k / s / t / p doubles that consonant: 切手 (kitte, stamp). Long vowels are written by repeating the vowel: お母さん (okāsan) has a long ā.
| き + ゃ | き + ゅ | き + ょ | し + ゃ | し + ゅ | し + ょ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| きゃ kya | きゅ kyu | きょ kyo | しゃ sha | しゅ shu | しょ sho |