He (kana)

"へ" redirects here. Not to be confused with ゝ (a Japanese iteration mark), ᄾ (an obsolete Korean hangul letter), or ㄟ (a Chinese bopomofo letter).

へ, in hiragana, or ヘ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which represents one mora. The [he] sound is the only sound that is written identically in hiragana and katakana and therefore confusable according to the Unicode Standard. In the Sakhalin dialect of the Ainu language, ヘ can be written as small ㇸ to represent a final [h] after an [e] sound (エㇸ [eh]).

he
hiragana katakana
transliteration	he
translit. with dakuten	be
translit. with handakuten	pe
hiragana origin	部
katakana origin	部
Man'yōgana	平 反 返 弁 弊 陛 遍 覇 部 辺 重 隔 閉 倍 陪 拝 戸 経
Voiced Man'yōgana	弁 便 別 部 倍 毎
spelling kana	平和のヘ Heiwa no "he"
unicode	U+3078, U+30D8
braille
Note: This mora was historically pronounced as "pe", with one of two different vowel sounds, which later merged.

It is usually pronounced [he] with the aspirate [h] before its vowel. It is also often used as a grammatical particle indicating direction, which makes only the vowel sound [e].

Though the two forms へ and ヘ are usually rendered with a small difference between them, in order to match better with the appearance of other hiragana or katakana characters, they can often be rendered identically. A reader is not expected to distinguish one from the other without contextual clues.

Forms	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana	Example words (with kanji)
Normal h- (は行 ha-gyō)	he	へ	ヘ	へび hebi 蛇 snake へる heru 減る abate/decrease へんか henka 変化 change/modification へい hei 塀 wall へいあん heian 平安 tranquility
	hei hee hē	へい, へぃ へえ, へぇ へー	ヘイ, ヘィ ヘエ, ヘェ ヘー
Addition dakuten b- (ば行 ba-gyō)	be	べ	ベ	かべ kabe 壁 wall べんきょう benkyō 勉強 studying ベッド beddo bed なんべい nanbei 南米 South America
	bei bee bē	べい, べぃ べえ, べぇ べー	ベイ, ベィ ベエ, ベェ ベー
Addition handakuten p- (ぱ行 pa-gyō)	pe	ぺ	ペ	いっぺん ippen 一辺 on a side ペルー perū Peru
	pei pee pē	ぺい, ぺぃ ぺえ, ぺぇ ぺー	ペイ, ペィ ペエ, ペェ ペー

Stroke order

The stroke order is identical between hiragana and katakana.

Stroke order in writing へ	Stroke order in writing ヘ
Stroke order in writing へ	Stroke order in writing ヘ

Other communicative representations

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
平和のヘ Heiwa no "He"	▄ ⓘ

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-12346 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

へ / ヘ in Japanese Braille
へ / ヘ he	べ / ベ be	ぺ / ペ pe	へい / ヘー hē/hei	べい / ベー bē/bei	ぺい / ペー pē/pei

• Computer encodings

Character information

Preview	へ		ヘ		ﾍ		ㇸ		㋬
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER HE		KATAKANA LETTER HE		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER HE		KATAKANA LETTER SMALL HE		CIRCLED KATAKANA HE
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12408	U+3078	12504	U+30D8	65421	U+FF8D	12792	U+31F8	13036	U+32EC
UTF-8	227 129 184	E3 81 B8	227 131 152	E3 83 98	239 190 141	EF BE 8D	227 135 184	E3 87 B8	227 139 172	E3 8B AC
Numeric character reference	へ	へ	ヘ	ヘ	ﾍ	ﾍ	ㇸ	ㇸ	㋬	㋬
Shift JIS (plain)[1]	130 214	82 D6	131 119	83 77	205	CD
Shift JIS-2004[2]	130 214	82 D6	131 119	83 77	205	CD	131 244	83 F4
EUC-JP (plain)[3]	164 216	A4 D8	165 216	A5 D8	142 205	8E CD
EUC-JIS-2004[4]	164 216	A4 D8	165 216	A5 D8	142 205	8E CD	166 246	A6 F6
GB 18030[5]	164 216	A4 D8	165 216	A5 D8	132 49 154 49	84 31 9A 31	129 57 189 50	81 39 BD 32
EUC-KR[6] / UHC[7]	170 216	AA D8	171 216	AB D8
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[8]	198 220	C6 DC	199 112	C7 70
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[9]	199 95	C7 5F	199 212	C7 D4

Character information

Preview	べ		ベ		ぺ		ペ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER BE		KATAKANA LETTER BE		HIRAGANA LETTER PE		KATAKANA LETTER PE
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12409	U+3079	12505	U+30D9	12410	U+307A	12506	U+30DA
UTF-8	227 129 185	E3 81 B9	227 131 153	E3 83 99	227 129 186	E3 81 BA	227 131 154	E3 83 9A
Numeric character reference	べ	べ	ベ	ベ	ぺ	ぺ	ペ	ペ
Shift JIS[1]	130 215	82 D7	131 120	83 78	130 216	82 D8	131 121	83 79
EUC-JP[3]	164 217	A4 D9	165 217	A5 D9	164 218	A4 DA	165 218	A5 DA
GB 18030[5]	164 217	A4 D9	165 217	A5 D9	164 218	A4 DA	165 218	A5 DA
EUC-KR[6] / UHC[7]	170 217	AA D9	171 217	AB D9	170 218	AA DA	171 218	AB DA
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[8]	198 221	C6 DD	199 113	C7 71	198 222	C6 DE	199 114	C7 72
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[9]	199 96	C7 60	199 213	C7 D5	199 97	C7 61	199 214	C7 D6

See Also

• Japanese particles: へ

References

1. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
2. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "Shift_JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 1) vs Unicode mapping table".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
3. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
4. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "EUC-JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 3) vs Unicode mapping table".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
5. Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
6. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
7. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
8. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
9. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.