Did okurigana use to be written in katakana before the 20th century?

2 comments

1. During the early 20th century katakana was commonly used instead of hiragana in books and magazines, but it is not because it was considered more masculine. Both men and women used hirgana to write in Japanese. Historically katakana was mostly used as okurigana to give the pronunciation when people wrote in kanbun, a literary language that follows the structure of Chinese, but is glossed as Japanese when read out-loud. Men were historically much more likely to learn kanbun, but they would also write classical Japanese when writing letters, poems, etc. (Although depending on the time period, social position, etc., their Japanese may have been more or less sprinkled with Chinese grammatical constructions.)

   I don’t know much about Meiji Japan, but my educated guess is that they moved toward using katakana instead of hiragana because it would have looked more detached from the traditional writing style and more phonetic-looking, in a way.

   Edit: not the best example, because of reasons, but I had it at hand.[You can see the use of katakana as okurigana in this Edo period edition of the Kojiki.](https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2533573/1/4) You can also see the marks that indicate what order the characters are meant to be read in to the lest.

   Here, [in this 1848 booklet written in classical Japanese, you can see the use of hiragana as okurigana](https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2543230/1/16). They both coexisted at the same time. They were just used to write in different written languages.

2. From what I understand they were developed independently by 2 different groups for two different purposes during the same period. (the Heian period)

   Hiragana was created by royal women who wrote novels and notes to each other. (the tale of genji, pillow book, which were some of the first novels in the world)

   Katakana was created by monks to write notes and prayers.

   The novels created by the women were very popular, and considered classics even today, and would’ve probably made hiragana popular. (it didn’t hurt that the texts were created by royalty which would’ve made them less looked down on than if it were written by peasants)

   Before that as the other poster said, they actually used a different writing system all together.

   There was some overlap of usage before the rules were settled, but the change you’re talking about was from the older system which was only Chinese characters to Chinese and hiragana/furigana.