The Sexist History Behind the Development of Hiragana

And how women were responsible for writing the first great Japanese texts

The Plate Mansion, by the great ukiyo-e artist Hokusai Katsushika Hokusai, in the public domain, sourced from rawpixel.com, original from the Library of Congress

Hiragana is one of the three main ‘alphabets’ used in the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji (Chinese characters). Its role is to indicate the pronunciation of kanji and is used as the basis of the Japanese writing system, verb…