Wa is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. It represents and has origins in the character 和. There is also a small ゎ/ヮ, that is used to write the morae /kwa/ and /gwa/, which are almost obsolete in contemporary standard Japanese but still exist in the Ryukyuan languages. A few loanwords such as shiikwaasa and Musica Antiqua Köln contain this kana in Japanese. Katakana ワ is also sometimes written with dakuten, ヷ, to represent a sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this. It is far more common to represent the /va/ sound with the digraph ヴァ.