smaller kana printed next to (vertical) or above (horizontal) non-kana text as pronunciation guide

okurigana: in written Japanese, the kana added after a kanji to indicate inflection endings, such as the べる (-beru) in 食(た)べる (taberu, “to eat”)

Man'yōgana, the early Japanese syllabary using Chinese characters to represent Japanese sounds: the predecessor of hiragana and katakana

hentaigana: any of the hiragana made obsolete in Meiji-era reforms that enforced having one hiragana for each syllable

(orthography) the four kana pairs of じ/ジ, ず/ズ, ぢ/ヂ and づ/ヅ, the latter two of which represent historical morae that are now pronounced identically to the former two in most major dialects

an orthographic technique utilizing Chinese characters in a way that maps the Chinese pronunciation, or such an approximation, to Japanese sounds to write Japanese words

an orthographic technique utilizing Chinese characters in a way that maps character semantics to Japanese words to write Japanese words

small okurigana used with kanbun, sutegana / small kana used for diphthongs, sutegana

(history) a syllabary with characters drawn from kanji, such as the 万葉仮名 (Man'yōgana), that is the precursor to hiragana and katakana

(collective) 平仮名 (hiragana) and 片仮名 (katakana)