The Japanese syllable set known as Hiragana is an 8-letter set of characters used in the Japanese writing system. It is a phonetic alphabet that consists of 46 basic characters, which are used to represent all the sounds of the Japanese language. Hiragana is often used alongside Kanji, the Chinese characters used in Japanese writing, to provide pronunciation and grammatical information. It is also used to write words for which there is no Kanji representation, such as foreign words or names.