Halfwidth Katakana Small Ya

ｬ is the halfwidth small ya that modifies the kana before it. Together they make a contracted sound: ｷｬ is kya and ｼｬ is sha.

Katakana developed from parts of Chinese characters used as reading notes. By the early ninth century, Buddhist scholars used such marks between lines to record Japanese readings of Chinese texts; katakana forms were standardized by the twelfth century. The narrow character set began with the 1969 JIS C 6220 one-byte set, revised as JIS X 0201 in 1976 for narrow character cells.

ャ and ｬ have the same role, while ヤ is the full-size ya. In ordinary Japanese text the small kana marks the sound; ｬ also carries a width choice tied to older data formats.

How do I type ｬ?

Enter the kana, then choose halfwidth katakana in your input method.

On Microsoft Japanese IME, F8 converts selected text to halfwidth katakana; Mac Japanese input has a Half-width Katakana mode. These controls were documented as of 2026-09-14.

Check the field's rules before entering halfwidth text. A 2025 e-Gov guide says its ordinary application rejects halfwidth kana, while a CSV route accepts JIS X 0201 characters. Japan Patent Office guidance, checked on 2026-09-14, warns that some fields replace halfwidth kana with fullwidth forms.