Kana script (hiragana and katakana)
Escritura kana (hiragana y katakana)
- Date
- c. century IX-X · confidence medium
- Place
- Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan
- Credited to
- Heian courtiers and Buddhist monks
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Two syllabaries derived from simplified Chinese characters: cursive hiragana, and angular katakana taken from Buddhist glosses. They allowed Japanese to be written with its own sounds.
Legends credit the syllabaries to Kūkai and Kibi no Makibi, but they evolved collectively from the man'yōgana of the 8th-9th centuries.
What it led to
- court literature such as the Tale of Genji (c. 1008)
- diaries and poems written by women
- the mixed kanji-kana system of modern Japanese