万葉仮名
Manyôgana are
Chinese characters that were used to write
Japanese words phonetically, way back before the
kana syllabaries were devised. The name comes from the
Manyoshu, one of the oldest works of
Japanese literature, where the characters were first used in this way. Modern
kana are actually highly simplified versions of their
manyogana ancestors, as you can see in the
hiragana and
katakana nodes.
Manyogana are not to be confused with ateji, the practice of writing foreign-derived words phonetically in kanji.