The is a Japanese ordering of kana.
It is named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a syllabic chart is therefore 46. Some of these gaps have always existed as gaps in sound: there was no yi or wu in Old Japanese, and ye disappeared in Late Old Japanese, predating the kana: the kana for e, i, and u double up for those phantom values. Also, with the spelling reforms after World War ...