Japanese has 3 main writing systems : hiragana , katakana and kanji .
日文有3种主要的书写系统：平假名，片假名和汉字。
Hiragana and katakana put together are known collectively as the " kana " .
平假名和片假名和在一起叫假名。
Unlike our roman characters , each character , whether hiragana , katakana , or kanji , is square and of identical size .
不象罗马字符，每个字符，无论平假名，片假名抑或都是方正的并且大小相同的。
Many campaign posters for japan 's general election on august 30th print the candidate 's name in hiragana , a rudimentary , phonetic script first taught to children , rather than the kanji .
Chinese pictograms were , for example , dismantled to form two entirely new alphabets , hiragana and katakana , while a new set of japanese readings was imposed on the original chinese characters .
