Show of Hands

They're two different writing styles. Kanji is phonetic but I don't know about the other one.

Hiragana = Traditional Japanese syllabary used to represent sounds. Often used for traditional Japanese words while katakana is used for borrowed foreign words.
Kanji = Borrowed Chinese characters incorporated into Japanese writings, used to represent things and ideas rather than sounds.

Kanji are borrowed Chinese text, and if I remember correctly, they represent a word, not a sound. Then they use two types of kana, hiragana and katakana. Hiragana is used for native Japanese words, and katakana is used for foreign words. Both of these types of text represent specific sounds (not entire words) and are strung together similarly to our letters to make up whole words. I was in Japan in a Fulbright years ago. That’s my basic understanding, anyway. When I learned Japanese, conversational was a heck of a lot easier than reading and writing.

Kinda like cursive versus not cursive.