800 AD to the present

History

Hiragana (平仮名,ひらがな) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji and in some cases Latin script. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana literally means "ordinary" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrasted with kanji).

It developed from man'yōgana, Chinese characters used for their pronunciations, a practice that started in the 5th century.

The forms of the hiragana originate from the cursive script style of Chinese calligraphy.

The figure below shows the derivation of hiragana from manyōgana via cursive script. The upper part shows the character in the regular script form, the center character in red shows the cursive script form of the character, and the bottom shows the equivalent hiragana.

Hence hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were generally not allowed access to the same levels of education as men.

From this comes the alternative name of onnade (女手) "women's writing".