Hiragana & katakana stroke order.
Every hiragana and katakana character, stroke by stroke. Watch each one animate, then trace it yourself. The tracing pad checks the order and direction of every stroke as you draw.
Hiragana stroke order
All 46 basic characters, the voiced forms with dakuten and handakuten, and every contracted sound, grouped by row.
Open the hiragana chart →Katakana stroke order
All 46 basic characters, the voiced forms with dakuten and handakuten, and every contracted sound, grouped by row.
Open the katakana chart →Why stroke order matters
When I started learning kana I treated the characters like drawings. If it looked right, it was right. That works until you try to write quickly. Characters drawn in the wrong order come out lopsided, and the shortcuts that real handwriting takes (where one stroke flows into the next) only make sense if you know which stroke comes next.
Stroke order also makes you a better reader. Handwritten Japanese, from shop signs to a friend's note, joins and simplifies strokes in predictable ways. And once you move on to kanji, the same rules carry over to characters with ten or twenty strokes. Kana is the cheapest place to build the habit.
The good news is that there are only a handful of rules, and they cover almost every kana. Here they are, each with real characters you can click through to practise.
The rules of kana stroke order
Top to bottom
When strokes are stacked, write the top one first. ミ is three short strokes written top to bottom, and こ is the same idea with two. This is the rule that almost never breaks.
Left to right
When strokes sit side by side, start on the left. い, り and ハ are all two strokes, left first. The same applies to whole parts of a character: in は and ほ, the vertical stroke on the left is finished before anything on the right begins.
Crossbars before the stroke through them
If a horizontal stroke is crossed by a vertical or slanted one, the horizontal goes first. キ is both crossbars, then the vertical. す, せ, た and な all start with their crossbar for the same reason.
Small marks come last
Dots and short finishing marks are written after the main shape, even when they sit at the top. お's dot is its third stroke, and か ends with the little dash on the right. Dakuten (the two ticks in が) and handakuten (the circle in ぱ) follow the same rule: they always go on last.
Every stroke has a direction
Horizontal strokes go left to right and vertical strokes go top to bottom. Slanted strokes usually fall from the top right down to the left, like ノ. The famous exceptions are シ and ン, whose long stroke sweeps up from the bottom left. That direction is the whole difference between ソ and ン.
Hiragana and katakana feel different to write
Hiragana grew out of cursive brush writing, so it is full of curves, loops and strokes that change direction partway through. Many hiragana are a single continuous stroke (し, つ, の, る), and the loops in ぬ, ね and る are part of a longer stroke rather than separate shapes.
Katakana came from fragments of kanji, so it is built from short, mostly straight strokes and sharp corners. A corner like the top right of コ or ロ is one stroke, not two: you go across and turn down without lifting the pen. Counting that corner as two strokes is the most common katakana mistake.
How to use these pages
Each row page matches one article in the mnemonics series, so you can learn what a character means and how to write it in the same sitting. Start with the hiragana vowels, watch each character once, then switch to Trace. Guided mode shows you where each stroke starts. Once that feels easy, try Ghost and then Memory, which gives you an empty box.
For paper practice, the printable charts and practice sheets pair well with this. To drill recognition, use the flashcards.