Hiragana to Katakana Converter (and Back)

Japanese uses two kana scripts for the same sounds: hiragana for native words and grammar, katakana for loanwords, names and emphasis. This converter swaps one for the other in a single step, and it also converts katakana to the half-width forms (ｶﾀｶﾅ) still found in old systems, receipts and bank statements, and back to normal full-width katakana. Kanji, Latin letters and punctuation stay as they are.

How to use this tool

1. Paste Japanese text.
2. Choose the target: katakana, hiragana, half-width katakana or full-width katakana.
3. Copy the converted text.
4. Check the note if some rare kana had no equivalent.

Formula

Katakana = hiragana code point + 0x60 (U+3041–3096 ↔ U+30A1–30F6). Half-width ↔ full-width uses Unicode compatibility normalization (NFKC); a voiced kana such as ガ becomes two half-width characters, ｶ + ﾞ.

The iteration marks ゝ ゞ become ヽ ヾ. The long-vowel mark ー is shared by both scripts and is not changed (it becomes ｰ in half-width). ヷ ヸ ヹ ヺ and small ヵ ヶ have no common hiragana form, so they stay in katakana.

Example

ひらがな becomes ヒラガナ, and カタカナ becomes かたかな. The half-width text ｶﾞｷﾞ becomes ガギ, and パーティー。 in half-width is ﾊﾟｰﾃｨｰ｡: the semi-voiced mark is a separate half-width character.