are syllabicJapanese scripts, a part of the Japanese writing system contrasted with the logographicChinese characters known in Japan as kanji . There are three kana scripts: modern cursive hiragana , modern angular katakana , and the old syllabic use of kanji known as man’yōgana that was ancestral to both. Hentaigana (変体仮名, "variant kana") are historical variants of modern standard hiragana. In modern Japanese, hiragana and katakana have directly corresponding character sets (different sets of characters representing the same sounds).