kana:

        
    Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji (漢字) and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji. There are three kana scripts: modern cursive hiragana (ひらがな), modern angular katakana (カタカナ), and the old syllabic use of kanji known as man’yōgana (万葉仮名) that was ancestral to both.