800 AD to the present

History

Katakana (片仮名、カタカナ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana,kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji).

It is thought to have been developed in the 9th century (during the early Heian period) by Buddhist monks in Nara by taking parts of man'yōgana characters as a form of shorthand, hence this kana is so-called kata (片, "partial, fragmented").

The adjacent table shows the origins of each katakana: the red markings of the original Chinese character (used as man'yōgana) eventually became each corresponding symbol.

Early on, katakana was almost exclusively used by men for official text and text imported from China.