In research on the acquisition of reading, there have been some cross-orthographic comparisons between alphabetic scripts and the hiragana syllabic script. One of the theoretical motives for these comparisons is the hypothesis that phonological awareness is related to the size of the phonological unit mapped by the orthography, with phoneme awareness limited to readers with alphabetic literacy. Therefore, it would be expected that young Japanese children who learn the hiragana syllabary (and no alphabetic orthography) would have poor awareness of phonemes, which are internal to syllables. The present research used methods more fully representative of the language and orthography examined. The results indicate a previous underestimation of early phonemic awareness in Japanese children.