kana-ascii

Render Japanese hiragana, katakana, and kanji as ASCII art in your terminal.

Dot-grid canvas · stroke order · mnemonics · guaranteed monospace.

あ (a) — ah as in father

. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . - - - [1] - - - . . .
. . . . | . . | . . . . .
. . . . | [2] | . . . . .
. . . . - - - - . . . . .
. . . . . | . . . . . . .
. . . . ( . ) [3] . . . .
. . . . . . \ . . . . . .
. . . . . . ~[4] . . . . .

Strokes:
  [1] horizontal bar    — left to right across top
  [2] box enclosure     — down, across bottom, up (open top-left)
  [3] drop + loop       — straight down, curves into circle
  [4] hook sweep        — sweeps right and flicks up

Mnemonic: Someone tied the letter 'a' into a knot. Messy — but it IS an 'a' in there.

Install

npm install kana-ascii

Or run directly:

npx kana-ascii あ
npx kana-ascii a

CLI

# By character
kana-ascii あ
kana-ascii ア

# By romaji — lowercase → hiragana, UPPERCASE → katakana
kana-ascii a          # → あ
kana-ascii A          # → ア
kana-ascii aiueo      # → renders あいうえお in sequence
kana-ascii AIUEO      # → renders アイウエオ in sequence
kana-ascii konnichiwa # → こんにちわ (shows coverage for unsupported chars)

# Render everything
kana-ascii --all

# List all supported characters
kana-ascii --list

Romaji conversion powered by hepburn.

Programmatic API

import { render, lookup, renderWord, renderAll, list } from "kana-ascii";

// Single character (by char or single romaji syllable)
const output = render("あ");   // or render("a")
console.log(output);           // → formatted string

// Multi-syllable word from romaji or kana
const results = renderWord("aiueo");
// → [{ char: "あ", romaji: "a", output: "...", supported: true }, ...]
results.forEach(r => console.log(r.output));

// Render everything
console.log(renderAll());

// Raw data lookup
const char = lookup("a");
console.log(char?.grid);
console.log(char?.strokes);
console.log(char?.mnemonic);

// List supported characters
const chars = list();
// [{ char: "あ", romaji: "a", type: "hiragana" }, ...]

Coverage

v0.1.0: Hiragana vowel row (あいうえお) + Katakana vowel row (アイウエオ).

More characters added weekly. Watch the repo for updates.

Roadmap:

• v0.2.0 — か行 / カ行 (ka row)
• v0.3.0 — Full hiragana + katakana
• v1.0.0 — Common kanji (JLPT N5)

Why ASCII art?

Because your terminal doesn't render brushstroke fonts. And because recognizing a character by its structure — not just its shape — is how stroke memory actually works.

The [1] [2] labels are there so you trace the character correctly, not just recognize it passively.

Pair with

mager/beginner-japanese on Loooom — a conversational Japanese skill for Claude Code.

npx loooom add mager/kana-ascii
npx loooom add mager/beginner-japanese

License

MIT