| Hiragana Image: | Japanese_Hiragana_kyokashotai_WA.svg |
| Katakana Image: | Japanese_Katakana_kyokashotai_WA.svg |
| Transliteration: | wa |
| Hiragana Manyogana: | 和 |
| Katakana Manyogana: | 和 |
| Other Manyogana: | 和 丸 輪 |
| Unicode: | U+308F, U+30EF |
| Flag1: | 2 |
| Flag2: | 9 |
| Spelling: | わらびのワ Warabi no "wa" |
Wa (hiragana: わ, katakana: ワ) is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. The combination of a W-column kana letter with Japanese: わ゙ in was introduced to represent [va] in the 19th century and 20th century. It represents pronounced as /[wa]/ and has origins in the character 和. There is also a small ゎ/ヮ, that is used to write the morae /kwa/ and /gwa/ (くゎ, ぐゎ), which are almost obsolete in contemporary standard Japanese but still exist in the Ryukyuan languages. A few loanword such as シークヮーサー(shiikwaasa from Okinawan language) and ムジカ・アンティクヮ・ケルン (Musica Antiqua Köln, German early music group) contains this letter in Japanese. Katakana ワ is also sometimes written with dakuten, ヷ, to represent a pronounced as //va// sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this. It is far more common to represent the /va/ sound with the digraph ヴァ.
| Form | Rōmaji | Hiragana | Katakana |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal w- (わ行 wa-gyō) | wa | わ | ワ |
| waa wā | わあ, わぁ わー | ワア, ワァ ワー |
The kana は (ha) is read as “wa” when it represents a particle.