Where the Japanese alphabet came from?

Answer 1

The Japanese don't have just one alphabet. They actually use four different ones: kanji, hiragana, katakana and romanji. Kanji were originally developed in China and are themselves pictographs that have been greatly simplified from their first forms. These began to been introduced to Japan in the 4th Century B.C.E, but initially they were only used for writting in Classical Chinese.

It wasn't until the 7th Century that a system of using the kanji phoenetically as way of writing Japanese called manyougana was developed. From this grew the hiragana and katakana alphabet. Hiragana came from the cursive writing of kanji and was used as an easier way of writing Japanese. Katakana were similarly developed, but they are usually just a small part of a kanji which had the needed sound.