The table below displays the encodings for the Japanese Kana (syllabic characters) that are built into the GNU libplot library and the GNU plotting utilities based on it, such as `graph'. They were digitized by Dr. Allen V. Hershey of the U.S. Naval Surface Weapons Center (Dahlgren, VA) in the mid-1960s. For details, see his technical report "Calligraphy for Computers". (Available from the U.S. National Technical Information Service at +1 703 487 4650; ask for item number AD662398.) These Kana are part of the HersheyEUC font, which is employed for drawing multibyte Japanese text strings. But you may also use these Kana while drawing text strings in any other Hershey font, by inserting the appropriate escape sequences. For example, you may label in Kana the axes of a graph prepared with `graph'. There are 83 Hiragana (cursive characters) and 86 Katakana (block characters). The indexing of the Kana is specified in the JIS X0208 standard. In that standard the Hiragana appear as 0x2421..0x2473 and the Katakana as 0x2521..0x2576. Here `0x' means that the number that follows is in base 16, or hexadecimal. For full information on the JIS standard, see "Understanding Japanese Information Processing", by Ken Lunde (O'Reilly, 1993). The Hiragana and Katakana are indexed in the table below as 0x21..0x73 and 0x21..0x76, respectively. A transliteration of each Kana is included, according to the Hepburn system. For example, the Kana `ka' is listed as 0x2b. The corresponding Hiragana would be 0x242b, and the corresponding Katakana would be 0x252b. To draw Hiragana `ka', you would use the escape sequence "\#J242b". To draw Katakana `ka', you would use the escape sequence "\#J252b". These escape sequences would be valid whenever the current font is a Hershey font other than HersheyEUC. By using the table below, you should find it easy to draw a phonetic representation of most Japanese words, syllable by syllable. You should be aware that in Japanese, many words are normally written with ideographic characters (Kanji) rather than Kana. However, any Japanese word may be rendered (possibly inelegantly) in terms of Kana. For example, "Mitsubishi" would be mi-tsu-bi-shi, i.e., "\#J245f\#J2444\#J2453\#J2437" in terms of Hiragana. You are cautioned that there are some special rules for combinations of sounds, e.g. consonant + diphthong. The `small' Kana are used for such combinations. Also, the `small tsu' Kana before a Kana beginning with the consonant k, s, t, or p is interpreted not as a syllable, but as a sign that that consonant should be doubled. Code Kana transliteration ---- -------------------- 0x21 a [small] 0x22 a 0x23 i [small] 0x24 i 0x25 u [small] 0x26 u 0x27 e [small] 0x28 e 0x29 o [small] 0x2a o 0x2b ka 0x2c ga 0x2d ki 0x2e gi 0x2f ku 0x30 gu 0x31 ke 0x32 ge 0x33 ko 0x34 go 0x35 sa 0x36 za 0x37 shi 0x38 ji 0x39 su 0x3a zu 0x3b se 0x3c ze 0x3d so 0x3e zo 0x3f ta 0x40 da 0x41 chi 0x42 dji 0x43 tsu [small] 0x44 tsu 0x45 dzu 0x46 te 0x47 de 0x48 to 0x49 do 0x4a na 0x4b ni 0x4c nu 0x4d ne 0x4e no 0x4f ha 0x50 ba 0x51 pa 0x52 hi 0x53 bi 0x54 pi 0x55 fu 0x56 bu 0x57 pu 0x58 he 0x59 be 0x5a pe 0x5b ho 0x5c bo 0x5d po 0x5e ma 0x5f mi 0x60 mu 0x61 me 0x62 mo 0x63 ya [small] 0x64 ya 0x65 yu [small] 0x66 yu 0x67 yo [small] 0x68 yo 0x69 ra 0x6a ri 0x6b ru 0x6c re 0x6d ro 0x6e wa [small] 0x6f wa 0x70 wi 0x71 we 0x72 wo 0x73 n KATAKANA only: 0x74 vu 0x75 ka [small] 0x76 ke [small]