We (kana)
in , or  in , is a nearly-obsolete Japanese . The combination of a W-column kana letter with "" in  was introduced to represent [ve] in the 19th and 20th centuries.

It is presumed that  represented , and that  and  indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura and Taishō periods, when they both came to be pronounced as  , later shifting to the modern  . Along with the kana for  ( in ,  in ), this  was deemed obsolete in Japanese in 1946 and replaced with  and . It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia or foreign words, the katakana form  (U-[small-e]) is preferred, as in  for "west".

The  still sees some modern-day usage. Ebisu is usually written as , but sometimes  like , and name of the beer , which is actually pronounced "Ebisu". The Japanese title of the Rebuild of Evangelion series is .   is sometimes written with a , , to represent a  sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this, and the combination  is far more common.

  is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the syllable . In the Ryūkyū University system,  is also combined with a small  (), to represent the sound .   is used in Ainu for .

Stroke order

The   is made with one stroke. It resembles a   that continues with a double-humped  shape underneath.

The   is made with three strokes: 
 A horizontal line that hooks down and to the left.
 A vertical line, just grazing the end of the first stroke.
 A long horizontal line across the bottom.

Other communicative representations

 Full Braille representation

 Computer encodings

References

See also
U (kana)
E (kana)

Specific kana