Hentaigana 変体仮名 変体がな 變體假名 變體がな itaigana (異体仮名)[1]
Script type	Syllabary
Time period	c. 800 – 1900 CE; minor use at present
Languages	Japanese
Related scripts
Parent systems	Oracle bone script Seal script Clerical script Regular script (kanji) Man'yōgana Hentaigana
Sister systems	Katakana, Hiragana
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Hira (410), ​Hiragana
Unicode
Unicode alias	Hiragana
Unicode range	U+1B000–U+1B0FF Kana Supplement U+1B100–U+1B12F Kana Extended-A

Japanese writing
Components
Kanji Stroke order Radicals Kyōiku kanji Jōyō kanji Jinmeiyō kanji Hyōgai kanji List of kanji by stroke count
Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Man'yōgana Sōgana Gojūon
Typographic symbols Japanese punctuation Iteration mark
Uses
Syllabograms Furigana Okurigana Braille
Transliteration
Rōmaji Hepburn (colloquial) Kunrei (ISO) Nihon (ISO transliteration) JSL (transliteration) Wāpuro (keyboard)
Cyrillization Polivanov system

In the Japanese writing system, hentaigana (変体仮名, 変体がな, Japanese pronunciation: [hentaiɡana] or [hentaꜜiɡana], lit. "variant kana")^{[lower-alpha 1]} are variant forms of hiragana.^[2]

Description

Today, among the hiragana glyphs, those not used in school education since 1900 are called "hentaigana".

Originally, hiragana had several forms for a single sound. For example, nowadays, the hiragana reading "ha" has only one form, "は". However, until the Meiji era (1868-1912), it was written in a variety of forms, including the following: , and . As a result of the artificial and authoritarian selection of hiragana glyphs, variant kana is not used much in Japan today, but it is still used in limited situations such as signboards, calligraphy, place names, and personal names.^[3]

History

現今児童重宝記 : 開化実益 (1886)

Comparison of the glyphs of Hentaigana. From the left is Meiji period, 1975, 2004, 2017.

Hiragana, the main Japanese syllabic writing system, derived from cursive form of man'yōgana, a system where Chinese ideograms (kanji) were used to write sounds without regard to their meaning. Originally, the same syllable (more precisely, mora) could be represented by several more-or-less interchangeable kanji, or different cursive styles of the same kanji. However, the 1900 script reform^[4][5] determined that only one specific character be used for each mora, with the rest being called hentaigana ("variant characters").

The 1900 standard included the hiragana ゐ, ゑ, and を, which historically stood for the phonetically distinct moras /wi/, /we/, and /wo/ but are currently pronounced as /i/, /e/, and /o/, identically to い, え, and お. The を kana is still commonly used in the Japanese writing system, instead of お, for the direct object particle /-o/. These characters were deprecated by the 1946 spelling reform.^[6]

Hentaigana is still used occasionally today in some contexts, such as store signs and logos, to achieve the "old-fashioned" or "traditional" look.

Katakana has variant forms, too. For example, (ネ) and (ヰ).^[7] However, katakana's variant forms are fewer than hiragana's ones. Katakana's choices of man'yōgana segments had stabilized early on and established – with few exceptions – an unambiguous phonemic orthography (one symbol per sound) long before the 1900 script regularization.^[8]

Standardized hentaigana

Prior to the proposal which led to the inclusion of hentaigana in Unicode 10.0, they were already standardized into a list by Mojikiban, part of the Japanese Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA).^[9]

To view hentaigana, special fonts need to be installed that support Hentaigana such as

• BabelStone Han
• IPA MJ Mincho Version 5.01 and later
• Hanazono Mincho
• Hanazono Mincho AFDKO
• UniHentaiKana

The glyph for example Hiragana wu (𛄟) also needs a special font to display such as

• Uraniwa Mincho X

Sources of hentaigana

Hentaigana are adapted from the reduced and cursive forms of the following man’yōgana (kanji) characters.^[12] Source characters for the kana are not repeated below for hentaigana even when there are alternative glyphs; some uncertain.

In Unicode

286 hentaigana characters are included in the Unicode Standard in the Kana Supplement and Kana Extended-A blocks. One character was added to Unicode version 6.0 in 2010, 𛀁 (U+1B001 HIRAGANA LETTER ARCHAIC YE which has the formal alias HENTAIGANA LETTER E-1), and the remaining 285 hentaigana characters were added in Unicode version 10.0 in June 2017.^[13]

The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000–U+1B0FF:

The Unicode block for Kana Extended-A is U+1B100–U+1B12F:

Modern usage

A soba restaurant: the sign reads "生𛁛𛂦゙ 𛂁𛀚゙井" kisoba nagai. Written right-to-left, kisoba has the kanji 生 ki, and hentaigana 𛁛𛂦゙, derived from the kanji 楚 so and ba (者 ha with ゛ [dakuten]). The black vertical text nagai has 奈 na, ga (可 ka with ゛), both also below, and the kanji 井 i.

Hentaigana are considered obsolete, but a few marginal uses remain. For example, otemoto (chopsticks), is written in hentaigana on some wrappers and many soba shops use hentaigana to spell kisoba on their signs. (See also: "Ye Olde" for "the old" on English signs.)

Hentaigana are used in some formal handwritten documents, particularly in certificates issued by classical Japanese cultural groups (e.g., martial art schools, etiquette schools, religious study groups, etc.). Also, they are occasionally used in reproductions of classic Japanese texts, akin to the use of blackletter in English and other Germanic languages to give an archaic flair. Modern poems may be composed and printed in hentaigana for visual effect.^[14]

However, most Japanese people are unable to read hentaigana nowadays, only recognizing a few from their common use in shop signs, or figuring them out from context.

Gallery

Some of the following hentaigana are cursive forms of the same kanji as their standard hiragana counterparts, but simplified differently. Others descend from unrelated kanji that represent the same sound.

• 
  以（い）i
• 
  江（え）e
• 
  於（お）o
• 
  可（か）ka, ga
• 
  起（き）ki, gi
• 
  古（こ）ko, go
• 
  志（し）shi, ji
• 
  春（す）su, zu
• 
  多（た）ta, da
• 
  奈（な）na
• 
  能（の）no
• 
  者（は）ha, ba
• 
  由（ゆ）yu
• 
  連（れ）re
• 
  路（ろ）ro
• 
  王（わ）wa

See also

• Furigana
• Romaji

Notes

References

External links

Look up hentaigana in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hentaigana for Jūminhyō.

• Chart of hentaigana calligraphy from O'Neill's A Reader of Handwritten Japanese Archived 2006-07-07 at the Wayback Machine
• A chart of hentaigana hosted by Jim Breen of the WWWJDIC
• Chart of kana from Engelbert Kaempfer circa 1693
• Hentaigana on signs (in Japanese)
• L2/15-239 Proposal for Japanese HENTAIGANA - Unicode