Hiragana is one of the two Japanese phonetic writing systems (kana), consisting of 46 basic characters. It evolved from cursive forms of Chinese characters and features soft, rounded shapes.

In Japanese text, hiragana is used for grammatical particles (は, が, を), verb conjugations, and native Japanese words not written in kanji. The balance between kanji and hiragana significantly affects readability. Japanese grammar books cover the rules for choosing between hiragana and kanji.

In Unicode, hiragana occupies the range U+3040 to U+309F. The regex /[぀-ゟ]/ can detect hiragana characters in programming.

For character counting, each hiragana character counts as one full-width character. Japanese learning books provide detailed guides on hiragana writing and pronunciation.