The hiragana cities of
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
are municipalities whose names are written in
hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...
rather than
kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
as is traditional for Japanese place names. Many hiragana city names have kanji equivalents that are either phonetic
manyōgana, or whose kanji are now
obsolete. Others, such as
Tsukuba
is a city located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 244,528 in 108,669 households and a population density of 862 persons per km². The percentage of the population aged over 65 was 20.3%. The total ar ...
in
Ibaraki Prefecture
is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Ibaraki Prefecture has a population of 2,871,199 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Ibaraki Prefecture borders Fukushima Prefecture to the north, ...
, are taken from localities or landmarks whose names continue to be written in kanji.
List of fully Hiragana cities and towns
List of partially Hiragana cities
List of Katakana cities
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hiragana And Katakana Place Names
Populated places in Japan
Japanese writing system