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Hiragana means ‘rounded writing’ which is a fair description, especially when compared to katakana. Both hiragana and katakana evolved around the 5th – 8th centuries from a cursive script known as ‘manyo’ugana’, in which kanji characters were used for their phonetic pronunciations, rather than their meaning. Within this convention, ’Grass script’ evolved which was an early ‘shorthand’ form of kanji (the Chinese character for "grass" also means loose or sketchy).
While Grass script is faster to write, it is much harder to read; and in many cases it hardly bears any resemblance to the original kanji, so you might well look at it and wonder “what on earth is that?” In Japan, the practice was not originally accepted by everyone; Grass script first gained popularity among women, (which the early Japanese called ‘onna-de’, or "women's writing"), whereas men continued to write in kanji. Consequently, much of the oldest ‘Japanese’ literature was written by women. The noblewoman, Murasaki Shikibu's ‘Tale of Genji’ (54 volumes circa 1002) which is probably the world's first novel, is an example.
We illustrate some kana ‘root’ kanji in the book, (notably, those which are covered within kanji section 1).
Originally, as a legacy of manyo’ugana all sounds had more than one hiragana. In 1900 the system was simplified so each sound had only one character. Other hiragana are known as hentaigana. Most Japanese people today are unable to read hentaigana, only recognizing a few from their use in some shop signs, or other limited contexts.
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