How does Japanese writing work? Hiragana, katakana and kanji explained

The first time you see a Japanese text, it can be a little shocking: round shapes, angular shapes and complex symbols in between, all without spaces between the words. What looks like one big jumble is actually a surprisingly logical system of several scripts, each with a clear job. Once you understand who does what, the chaos suddenly turns into structure.

In everyday life, Japanese uses three scripts at the same time: hiragana, katakana and kanji. On top of that there is romaji, the spelling with latin letters. In this article we go through each one, look at how they work together in a real sentence, and explain why three systems exist at all.

The three scripts at a glance

• 🌸Hiragana (ひらがな): a flowing syllabary for Japanese grammar and native words.
• 🌸Katakana (カタカナ): an angular syllabary for loanwords, names and sound effects.
• 🌸Kanji (漢字): meaning-based characters borrowed from Chinese, used for word stems.

Hiragana: the backbone of the language

Hiragana is the most important of the three scripts and usually the first one you learn. It is a syllabary: each character does not stand for a single sound as in the alphabet, but for a whole syllable, for example か for ka, き for ki, く for ku. There are around 46 basic characters, from which all other sounds are formed with small additions.

You need hiragana for almost everything that makes up the grammar: the particles that connect words in a sentence, and the endings of verbs and adjectives. Many Japanese words that have no common kanji are also written in hiragana. Without hiragana you can read practically no complete sentence.

Katakana: for everything foreign

Katakana has exactly the same sounds as hiragana, but looks more angular and straight. Compare the round hiragana あ with the angular katakana ア: same sound a, different shape. While hiragana handles everything Japanese, katakana takes care of everything that comes from outside.

• 🌸Loanwords from other languages, such as コーヒー (kōhī, coffee) or テレビ (terebi, television).
• 🌸Foreign names and country names, such as ドイツ (Doitsu, Germany).
• 🌸Onomatopoeia and sound effects, often in manga, such as ワンワン (wanwan, woof woof).
• 🌸Emphasis, similar to italics or capital letters in English.

Kanji: meaning instead of sound

Kanji are the part that intimidates most learners, and unfairly so. Unlike hiragana and katakana, kanji do not stand for sounds but for a meaning. The character 山 means mountain, 川 means river, 人 means person. A single character can carry a whole word or word stem.

The key feature: most kanji have more than one reading. Broadly, there is the on reading, which comes from Chinese, and the kun reading, which is of Japanese origin. Which reading applies depends on the word the kanji sits in. This sounds complicated at first, but with a little practice a pattern emerges quickly. This is exactly where it helps enormously to learn each kanji together with a concrete word rather than in isolation.

For the first big goal, the JLPT N5, you only need around 100 kanji. In daily life in Japan about 2000 characters are common, the so-called jōyō kanji. That is a lot, but it comes piece by piece, not all at once.

Romaji: spelling with latin letters

Romaji is not a real Japanese script but the representation of the sounds with latin letters, for example konnichiwa for こんにちは. Romaji helps on the very first day and also shows up in Japan on station signs or company names. Do not rely on it for too long though: reading in romaji permanently makes real reading hard to pick up. Think of romaji as training wheels that you take off early.

How it all comes together in one sentence

The nice thing is that in a normal sentence the scripts work hand in hand, each doing its job. Take this sentence: 私はコーヒーを飲みます。 (Watashi wa kōhī o nomimasu, I drink coffee.)

• 🌸私 is a kanji and carries the meaning I.
• 🌸は and を are hiragana and here act as particles that mark the parts of the sentence.
• 🌸コーヒー is katakana, because coffee is a loanword.
• 🌸飲 is the kanji for drink, and ます is the hiragana ending that makes it polite.

So in a single short sentence you see all three scripts: kanji for meaning, hiragana for grammar and katakana for the loanword. It is exactly this interplay that makes Japanese texts unfamiliar at first and, after a little practice, surprisingly readable, because the kanji act like small anchors for the eye.

Why are there three scripts at all?

Historically Japan had no script of its own at first and adopted the Chinese characters, the kanji, many centuries ago. Because Chinese and Japanese work very differently, there was no way to write the Japanese endings and grammatical particles. From simplified kanji the two syllabaries then emerged: the flowing hiragana and the angular katakana. So today, meaning characters and phonetic scripts complement each other into a system that captures both meaning and pronunciation at once.

And the missing spaces? Because the kanji visually highlight the important words and the hiragana around them form the grammar, the trained eye recognises word boundaries even without gaps. The mix of scripts thus takes over the job that spaces do in English.

In what order should you learn?

• 🌸Hiragana first, because it is the foundation for pronunciation and grammar.
• 🌸Then katakana, which you learn much faster thanks to the shared sounds.
• 🌸Alongside, your first words and sentences, so the kana settle in.
• 🌸After that, kanji in small portions, always together with a word.

You can master the two syllabaries in one to two weeks with a little daily practice. After that you build up kanji and vocabulary step by step. Download the free hiragana and katakana charts, put them on the wall and get started. Once you read the kana with confidence, the rest is far easier than it looks at the start.

Frequently asked questions