> First they developed a phonetic alphabet specifically for Japanese No. First they used a set of existing Chinese characters that matched the syllables of Jap

> First they developed a phonetic alphabet specifically for Japanese No. First they used a set of existing Chinese characters that matched the syllables of Japanese - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27y%C5%8Dgana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27y%C5%8Dgana It took several hundred years until Hiragana developed from the cursive writing style of the Chinese characters.