Modern Japanese is written using two syllabaries called kana: hiragana and katakana. Each syllabary contains 46 basic characters, and together they form the phonetic foundation of the written language. Although the two systems cover the same set of sounds, they serve different purposes. Hiragana is used primarily for native Japanese words and for grammatical particles that mark the structure of a sentence. Katakana, on the other hand, is reserved for loanwords from other languages, foreign names, and onomatopoeia. This division allows readers to immediately recognize whether a word is of Japanese origin or borrowed from abroad.
The building blocks of both syllabaries are the five vowels: a, i, u, e, o. These vowels appear in every row of the kana chart and combine with consonants to form syllables. The very first character of both syllabaries represents the vowel "a": あ in hiragana and ア in katakana. From this starting point, every other kana can be understood as a consonant paired with one of these five vowels, or as a special case that the chart handles separately.
Because hiragana is the most natural script for native Japanese vocabulary, it is usually the first one learners study. Once hiragana feels familiar, katakana introduces itself as a parallel system with the same sounds but a different visual style, distinct shapes that make loanwords easy to spot on the page. Mastering both syllabaries is the essential first step toward reading Japanese fluently.