Interactive Hiragana Chart

This chart shows all 46 hiragana characters arranged in the traditional aiueo order. Click any cell to hear its pronunciation spoken aloud using your device's Japanese voice. Use the romaji toggle to hide the English readings and test whether you can recall each sound from the character shape alone.

How to use this chart

Start with romaji on. Read each row left to right, clicking each character to hear the sound. Then switch romaji off and go through the same rows again, trying to recall the reading before you click. The brief green highlight and audio confirm whether you were right. This is active recall, the technique that research consistently shows beats re-reading by a wide margin.

A session of 10-15 minutes per day for three days is enough for most adults to reach confident recognition of all 46. Writing them from memory takes a bit longer, roughly a week of daily practice, but recognition is the first milestone and this chart gets you there.

Reading the grid

Japanese kana are traditionally organized into rows (consonant groups) and columns (vowels). The five columns are always a, i, u, e, o in that order. The rows go: vowels, k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w, and the standalone n. You will notice the y-row and w-row have empty slots because those sounds do not exist in Japanese. Every character in a row shares the same consonant; every character in a column shares the same vowel. Once you see that structure, the chart becomes a map rather than a random list.

Dakuten and handakuten

This chart shows the 46 base hiragana. Japanese also has voiced and semi-voiced variants produced by adding small marks to the upper-right corner of certain characters.

Two small strokes (dakuten, ゚) voice the consonant: か (ka) becomes が (ga), さ (sa) becomes ざ (za), た (ta) becomes だ (da), は (ha) becomes ば (ba). A small circle (handakuten) on the ha-row gives you the p-sounds: は (ha) becomes ぱ (pa), and so on. These modifications add roughly 25 more syllables without any new shapes to learn. They come naturally after you know the base chart.

Characters people mix up most

A handful of hiragana look similar and trip up nearly every learner. The classic pairs worth drilling together:

• し (shi) vs. つ (tsu) - both are fishhook shapes. し hangs vertically; つ lies on its side curling to the right.
• ね (ne), れ (re), and わ (wa) - share the same left side. The right half is what separates them.
• ぬ (nu) vs. め (me) - ぬ has an extra looping tail.
• ろ (ro) vs. る (ru) - る has a small loop at the bottom right.
• は (ha), ほ (ho), and ま (ma) - three close cousins. Drill them side by side until the differences feel obvious.

The strategy: whenever you meet a confusable pair, drill them together, not apart. Put them side by side in your head until the distinction feels automatic.

A note on stroke order

If you want to write hiragana by hand rather than just recognize them, stroke order matters for legibility and for later when you tackle kanji. Three rules cover the vast majority of hiragana: write top to bottom, write left to right, and when horizontal and vertical strokes cross, write the horizontal first. You do not need to memorize every character's exact stroke count. You need enough consistency that your handwriting is readable.

For animated stroke-by-stroke guidance, see the stroke order viewer, or jump to the complete hiragana learning guide for mnemonics, a three-day schedule, and practice advice.

After you know the chart

Once you can identify all 46 hiragana reliably, the natural next step is katakana. The shapes are different but the sounds are identical, so the second script takes a fraction of the time. After both scripts, move into vocabulary with the JLPT N5 deck.

If you want spaced repetition built into a mobile app so you are not maintaining your own review schedule, Inku handles that on iPhone. Every hiragana and katakana character in this chart is in the app with native voice audio and handwriting practice. Download Inku with a 7-day free trial.