In the Japanese writing system, are ligatures in the kana writing system, both hiragana and katakana. Kana such as and are not kana ligatures, but polysyllabic kana. Most of such ligatures and polysyllabic kanas became obsolete.
History
These characters were widely used until a spelling reform decreed that each sound (mora) would be represented by one (kana) character. In January 1900, the Kana Investigation Committee (仮名調査委員) passed a resolution to "limit the number of homophone kana characters to one each" and aimed to abolish hentaigana, iteration marks, long-vowel marks, , the characters ゐ/ヰ (wi) and ゑ/ヱ (we), as well as the ligatures and the polysyllabic kanas.
Kana ligatures such as (toki), (koto), etc., were actively used in Japan during the Edo and Meiji periods. These ligatures were sometimes placed together along with the hiragana and katakana syllabaries in Japanese school textbooks. Nowadays, these ligatures are obsolete and are not taught at schools anymore.
Encoding standards
These ligatures were not represented in computer character encodings until JIS X 0213:2000 (JIS2000) added ゟ (yori) and ヿ (koto). In 2002, ヿ and ゟ were added to Unicode 3.2. In October 2009, 𪜈 (tomo) was added to Unicode 5.2 in the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C block. In June 2017, 𬼀 (shite), 𬼂 (nari), and 𬻿 (nari) were added to Unicode 10.0 in the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F block.Unicode database. (Newly assigned in Unicode 5.2.0 [October, 2009] and in Unicode 10.0.0 [June, 2017]) In September 2026, Unicode 18.0 added (koto), (toki), (tote) and (yori) to the Kana Extended-A block, encoded as kana rather than as ideographs; the proposals also covered kashiko, sama, mairasesōrō and to-iu, which were dropped before encoding.
List Hiragana ligature Historical/HepburnImageCharacterUnicodeOriginかしこ/kashiko 𛀚しここと/kotoU+1B123こと普通日本文典 Ochiai Naobumi et al., 1893ごと/goto゙゙ごとさま/sama さ𛃅ことばの泉 : 日本大辞典 (21版) p. 3 Ochiai Naobumi, 1904 まゐらせさうらふ/mairasesōrō 参らせ候ふ より/yoriゟU+309Fより
Polysyllabic hiragana Historical/HepburnImageCharacterUnicodeOriginなり/nari 𬼂U+2CF02也Kōta Kodama's 『くずし字解読辞典〔普及版〕』 Tokyo-dō Publishing, among others, 1993Ikudō Tajima's 「法華経為字和訓考—資料編（三）—」 Research Journal of the Faculty of Letters, Nagoya University, 1990
Katakana ligature Historical/HepburnImageCharacterUnicodeOriginトイフ/toyū ト云日本大文典. 第1編 p. 42–45 Ochiai Naobumi, 1894國語學大系 第七巻 文字(一) p. 302–303 Kyūzō Fukui, 1939仮字本末 Nobutomo Ban, 1850トキ/tokiU+1B124トキ和漢の文典 : 雅俗対照トテ/toteU+1B125トテトモ/tomo𪜈U+2A708トモドモ/domo𪜈゙ドモヨリ/yoriU+1B126ヨリ操觚便覧 Fujī Otome, 1899
Polysyllabic katakana Historical/HepburnImageCharacterUnicodeOriginイフ/yū 云コト/kotoヿU+30FF事シテ/shite𬼀U+2CF00為トキ/toki 時ナリ/nari𬻿U+2CEFF也
In Unicode
See also
Japanese rebus monogram
References