Katakana Chart

The full katakana syllabary, arranged the way it is actually taught: consonant series down the side, vowels across the top.

Japanese uses two syllabaries alongside kanji. Katakana is the angular one, used mainly for loanwords, foreign names, onomatopoeia and emphasis — roughly the job italics do in English. Each character stands for a whole syllable rather than a single sound, which is why the grid below has consonants on one axis and vowels on the other.

Reading the table is straightforward: pick a consonant row, follow it across to a vowel column, and the cell gives you the character plus its Hepburn romanisation. The five characters in the top row are the bare vowels, and the single character at the bottom left is the standalone n, the only kana that is not a full syllable.

Katakana — basic syllabary

—	a	i	u	e	o
—	ア a	イ i	ウ u	エ e	オ o
K	カ ka	キ ki	ク ku	ケ ke	コ ko
S	サ sa	シ shi	ス su	セ se	ソ so
T	タ ta	チ chi	ツ tsu	テ te	ト to
N	ナ na	ニ ni	ヌ nu	ネ ne	ノ no
H	ハ ha	ヒ hi	フ fu	ヘ he	ホ ho
M	マ ma	ミ mi	ム mu	メ me	モ mo
Y	ヤ ya		ユ yu		ヨ yo
R	ラ ra	リ ri	ル ru	レ re	ロ ro
W	ワ wa				ヲ wo
N	ン n

Voiced and semi-voiced

Adding two small strokes (the dakuten) to a character voices its consonant — k becomes g, s becomes z, t becomes d, h becomes b. A small circle instead (the handakuten) turns the h series into p. These are not separate letters to memorise so much as a modification applied to characters you already know.

—	a	i	u	e	o
G	ガ ga	ギ gi	グ gu	ゲ ge	ゴ go
Z	ザ za	ジ ji	ズ zu	ゼ ze	ゾ zo
D	ダ da	ヂ ji	ヅ zu	デ de	ド do
B	バ ba	ビ bi	ブ bu	ベ be	ボ bo
P	パ pa	ピ pi	プ pu	ペ pe	ポ po

Copy any character

Every character below is a single Unicode code point, so it pastes anywhere plain text is accepted. Click one to copy it.

A note on stroke order

A chart shows you what the characters look like, not how to write them. Stroke order matters in Japanese because it governs the shape a character takes at speed and how handwriting-recognition input reads it. If you are learning to write rather than just to recognise, the printable practice grids in the printables section lay out the sequence square by square.