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Hentaigana (変体仮名) are alternative kana letterforms equivalent to standard kana characters. This is a legacy of man'yōgana, where many different kanji could be used to represent the same syllable. As the man'yōgana forms became simplified into cursive forms, hentaigana and hiragana were the result.

Hentaigana were used more or less interchangeably with their equivalent hiragana on an ad hoc, individual basis until 1900, when the hiragana syllabary was standardized to one character per mora. They are not included in Unicode.

Japanese writing

Kanji

Kana

• Hiragana
• Katakana
• Hentaigana
• Man'yōgana

Uses

• Furigana
• Okurigana

Rōmaji

Modern hiragana n.

The hiragana "syllabic n" (ん) derives from a cursive form of the character 无. The spelling reform of 1900 separated the two uses, declaring that む could only be used for /mɯ/ and ん could only be used for syllable-final /n/. Previously, in the absence of a character for the syllable-final /n/, the sound was spelled (but not pronounced) identically to /mɯ/, and readers had to rely on context to determine what was intended. This ambiguity has led to some modern expressions based on what are, in effect, spelling pronunciations. For example, iwan to suru "trying to say" is ultimately a misreading of mu as n^{[citation needed]}. (The modern Japanese form 言おう iō comes from earlier 言はむ ihamu. Many other changes are seen here as well.)

Hentaigana are considered obsolete in modern writing, but a few uses still remain. For example, many soba shops use hentaigana to spell kisoba on their signs. Hentaigana are used in some formal handwritten documents, particularly in certificates issued by classical Japanese cultural groups (e.g., martial art schools, etiquette schools, religious study groups, etc). Also, hentaigana are occasionally used in reproductions of classic Japanese texts. Hentaigana may be used much like blackletter in English and other Germanic languages, to give an archaic flair. However, most Japanese people are unable to read hentaigana, only recognizing a few from their common use in shop signs, or figuring them out from context.

Note that this hentai (変体: "variants") is not the same word as the hentai (変態) from which the English slang term is derived.

Note that some of the following examples are simplified from the same kanji as their hiragana counterparts, but written differently.

以（い）i	江（え）e	於（お）o	可（か）ka
起（き）ki	古（こ）ko	志（し）shi	春（す）su
多（た）ta	奈（な）na	能（の）no	者（は）ha
由（ゆ）yu	連（れ）re	路（ろ）ro	王（わ）wa

A more complete list and more information can be seen in the Japanese Wikipedia pages ja:変体仮名 and ja:住民基本台帳収録変体仮名

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Hentaigana for Jūminhyō

• Chart of hentaigana calligraphy from O'Neill's "A Reader of Handwritten Japanese"
• A chart of hentaigana hosted by Jim Breen of the WWWJDIC
• Chart of kana from Engelbert Kaempfer circa 1693
• Hentaigana on signs (in Japanese)
• Hentaigana
• Mojikyo fonts including hentaigana and word processor support