Japanese Braille (and why it’s easier than written Japanese)

Okay, so I thought I’d write a post about a topic that’s really close to my heart, being a Legally Blind person: Japanese Braille.

There are 1.64 million people in Japan with an Uncorrectable Vision Impairments, 187,000 of which are listed as Blind.

Japanese Braille sounds really difficult, but in reality it’s not actually that hard! Especially once you get a few hundred Kanji in, learning Japanese Braille is honestly super simple.

First of all, a note: Japanese Braille (99% of the time, at least) is completely phonetic; there’s no differentiation between Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji like there is in Written Japanese.

Additionally, it follows really basic patterns; with the exception of a few Punctuation-type characters, you basically only have to learn 21 basic pieces, as everything else follows basic patterns beyond that.

First off, the vowels:

All other Syllables use these same Vowels, in the same places

Following this, there comes all of the Consonants

Note that the vowels are in the exact same spot as in the AIUEO characters, just with an added mark for the Consonant.

Here is probably a good place to point out: Dakuten is marked by a single dot on the middle of the right side of the cell, placed BEFORE the character that gets changed by the Dakuten (Handakuten is the same, except the dot was lowered to the bottom right of the cell)

You’ll note that this brings us up to 14 characters…. where are all the rest?

If you’re observant, you’ll note that Ya, Yu, Yo, and Wa and (W)o are missing from the chart here. That’s because these 5 characters break the rules, just a little bit.

(Note that the Wi & We characters are only there for Ancient Japanese; don’t worry if you never learned them before, they’re gone from Japanese now)

Note that the -y- character there is placed BEFORE another consonant to make it a _y_ version of it (i.e. put it before Ka to make Kya), and that the -w- character is used to make all the irregular Little Characters (i.e. put it before Ha and you’ll get Fa).

There’s 2 more characters to learn, and they’re pretty easy.

They’re made for doubling consonants, and doubling vowels respectively

For example, putting a Sokuon before Ka makes Kka, and a Chouon AFTER A makes Aa

Anyways, that covers all the fundamentals of Japanese Braille, hopefully enabling even more people to make Blind Literacy possible, in an entire other language!

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