How Many Katakana Are There?
It Depends How You Count

How Many Katakana Characters Are There?

It depends entirely on what you count. This is why you will find different numbers on different websites.

None of these numbers is wrong. If you are a learner asking "how many do I need to memorise", the answer is 46 — everything else is built from those.

But the gap between 104 and 107 is the interesting one, because it is not a matter of opinion. It comes down to exactly three characters. We will get to them below.

What Is Katakana?

Japanese has three writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Katakana (カタカナ) is a syllabic alphabet — each character represents one sound, just like hiragana. There are 46 basic katakana characters, each corresponding exactly to a hiragana character in terms of pronunciation.^[1]

While hiragana characters have flowing, rounded strokes, katakana characters have straight lines and angular shapes. This visual distinction is one of the reasons they developed separate uses in modern Japanese.

A Brief History

Both hiragana and katakana emerged during the Heian period (794–1185 CE) as adaptations of Chinese characters (kanji). While hiragana was developed from the cursive (grass script) form of kanji — mainly by poets and women at court — katakana was developed separately by Buddhist monks and scholars who needed a quick notation system for reading Chinese texts.^[2]

Monks would write small katakana symbols next to kanji as pronunciation guides. Each katakana character was derived from a part (radical or abbreviated form) of a specific kanji. For example, ア (a) comes from the kanji 阿, and カ (ka) comes from 加.

All 46 Katakana Characters

The 46 basic characters cover every sound in standard Japanese. Voiced sounds (dakuten ﾞ), semi-voiced sounds (handakuten ﾟ), and combined sounds (like ファ, チャ) are extensions of these 46.

Adding 25 More: Dakuten and Handakuten

Two small marks change the sound of a character. The dakuten (゛), two short strokes in the upper right, turns a voiceless sound into a voiced one. The handakuten (゜), a small circle, applies only to the H row and turns it into a P sound.

That is 25 additional characters. 46 + 25 = 71.

Adding the Combined Sounds: Yōon

A small ャ, ュ or ョ written after a character from the "i" column merges the two into a single sound. キ ki plus a small ャ becomes キャ kya — one syllable, not two.

Seven characters in the i-column can take these: キ, シ, チ, ニ, ヒ, ミ, リ. Each combines with three small kana, giving 7 × 3 = 21.

Their voiced forms can too: ギ, ジ, ヂ, ビ, ピ. That is another 5 × 3 = 15.

21 + 15 = 36. And 71 + 36 = 107.

So why do so many charts say 104?

The Three Characters Behind 104 vs 107

The difference is exactly three characters: ヂャ, ヂュ and ヂョ.

In modern standard Japanese, ヂ is pronounced identically to ジ. So ヂャ and ジャ sound the same. This is part of a well-known feature of Japanese called yotsugana — "the four kana" — referring to ジ, ヂ, ズ and ヅ. These four represented distinct sounds historically, but in standard Japanese they merged into two.

After the Second World War, Japanese spelling was reformed. Under the modern kana orthography, ジ and ズ became the standard spellings, and ヂ and ヅ survive only in a small set of exceptions.

The practical result: ヂャ, ヂュ and ヂョ are almost never written. Many chart makers leave them out, which gives 33 combined sounds instead of 36 — and a total of 104 instead of 107.

The Characters Invented for Foreign Words

There is one more group, and it belongs to katakana alone.

Japanese has no native "v", "f" or "ti" sound. But katakana exists to write foreign words, so combinations were devised to cover them — by attaching a small vowel to an existing character:

These extended combinations do not exist in hiragana. Hiragana writes native Japanese words, which never needed them.

This leads to something many learners find surprising: the two syllabaries are usually described as writing "the same 46 sounds", but katakana can in fact represent more sounds than hiragana.

When Is Katakana Used?

Modern Japanese uses katakana in five main contexts:

Katakana vs Hiragana at a Glance

Tips for Learning Katakana

References

1. Shibatani, Masayoshi (1990). The Languages of Japan. Cambridge University Press. p. 120.
2. Seeley, Christopher (1991). A History of Writing in Japan. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 32–36.
3. Japanese Industrial Standards Committee (1981). JIS Z 8301 — Guidelines for drafting standards. Note on katakana usage in biological nomenclature.
4. Yotsugana — the historical merger of ジ/ヂ and ズ/ヅ in standard Japanese.
5. Gendai Kanazukai — the postwar modern kana orthography, which restricts ヂ and ヅ to a limited set of exceptions.