Wa (kana)

wa
hiragana katakana
transliteration	wa
hiragana origin	和
katakana origin	和

わ, in hiragana, or ワ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. It represents [wa] and has origins in the character 和. There is also a small ゎ/ヮ, that is used to write the morae /kwa/ and /gwa/ (くゎ, ぐゎ), which are obsolete in contemporary standard Japanese but still exist in the Ryukyuan languages. Katakana ワ is also sometimes written with dakuten, ヷ, to represent a /va/ sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this. It is far more common to represent the /va/ sound with the combination ヴァ.

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal w- (わ行 wa-gyō)	wa	わ	ワ
	waa wā, wah	わあ, わぁ わー	ワア, ワァ ワー

The kana は (ha) is read as “wa” when it represents a particle.

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing わ

Stroke order in writing ワ

Stroke order in writing わ

Stroke order in writing ワ

Other representations

• Computer encodings

Character	わ		ワ		ﾜ		ゎ		ヮ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER WA		KATAKANA LETTER WA		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER WA		HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL WA		KATAKANA LETTER SMALL WA
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	12431	U+308F	12527	U+30EF	65436	U+FF9C	12430	U+308E	12526	U+30EE
UTF-8	227 130 143	E3 82 8F	227 131 175	E3 83 AF	239 190 156	EF BE 9C	227 130 142	E3 82 8E	227 131 174	E3 83 AE
Numeric character reference	わ	わ	ワ	ワ	ﾜ	ﾜ	ゎ	ゎ	ヮ	ヮ
Shift JIS	130 237	82 ED	131 143	83 8F	220	DC	130 236	82 EC	131 142	83 8E

• Braille

わ / ワ in Japanese Braille
わ / ワ wa	ヷ va	わあ / ワー wā	ヷー vā

• Japanese semaphore