🔀 Hiragana to Katakana Converter (Two-Way)

Japanese has two phonetic syllabaries: hiragana (ひらがな), used for native words and grammatical endings, and katakana (カタカナ), used mainly for foreign loanwords, emphasis, and scientific names. Every sound in one script has a direct counterpart in the other, so converting between them is a pure one-to-one code-point swap that never changes pronunciation.

This kana converter swaps each character between the two scripts in either direction. It is handy for learners drilling recognition, designers who need katakana emphasis in a mock-up, and editors who must normalise mixed-script text. Pair it with the romaji converter when you also need Latin letters, or the furigana generator when you need reading aids above kanji.

Because the two scripts share a fixed Unicode offset, the conversion is lossless and reversible. Refer to the table below for the standard 1:1 mapping:

The converter walks the input one character at a time and checks its Unicode code point. Hiragana occupies U+3041–U+3096 and katakana occupies U+30A1–U+30F6. The two blocks are exactly 0x60 (96) apart, so the rule is simply: when converting hiragana to katakana, add 0x60 to the code point; when converting katakana to hiragana, subtract 0x60. Characters outside both blocks (kanji, Latin letters, digits, punctuation) are left untouched, and the voicing marks ゛ (dakuten) and ゜ (handakuten) stay attached to their base kana.

The table below summarises the code-point arithmetic behind the swap:

Because the mapping is a fixed numeric offset, it is perfectly reversible: converting katakana back to hiragana always restores the original text. For reading the result in Latin letters afterwards, route the output through the romaji converter. If you are unsure how a word reads in the first place, the kanji reading lookup can help.

1. Paste or type Japanese kana text into the input box.
2. Pick a direction - Hiragana to Katakana or Katakana to Hiragana.
3. Click Convert to see the swapped text instantly.
4. Copy the result, or click Convert again to reverse it back.
5. Use the reference table to check any kana pair you are unsure about.

Does the converter also handle kanji?

No. Kanji are logographic characters outside both kana Unicode blocks, so they pass through unchanged. Only hiragana and katakana are swapped. To get readings for kanji, use a furigana tool instead.

What happens to small kana like ぁ, ゃ, ッ?

Small kana (ぁ ゃ ァ ョ ッ and so on) live inside the same Unicode blocks and are converted just like their full-size counterparts, preserving their small size in the target script.

Are dakuten and handakuten (゛ ゜) handled?

Yes. Voiced and semi-voiced marks such as ゛ and ゜ are separate code points that fall outside the conversion blocks, so they stay attached to whichever kana precedes them and move along with the text.

Will the long-vowel mark ー turn into anything?

No. The ー mark is a katakana-specific character and is kept exactly as typed. In natural hiragana a long vowel is usually spelled with an extra kana, so you may want to adjust that by hand.

Is my text sent to a server?

No. The entire conversion runs as JavaScript in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or logged, so it is safe to paste personal or draft text.

Can I convert very long text?

Yes. Because the operation is a simple character scan, it handles thousands of characters instantly with no practical length limit.

Katakana is not just for loanwords - it is also used for emphasis (the way italics work in English) and for plant and animal names in scientific writing. When you convert a whole paragraph to katakana for practice, remember that long vowels in katakana use the ー mark, while hiragana spells them out (おう, おお). The converter preserves ー exactly as typed, so you may want to adjust those manually for natural hiragana. Punctuation like the ideographic comma 、 and full stop 。 are shared by both scripts and never change. For counting the characters in your converted text, paste it into the Japanese character counter.