U+30F1 "ヱ" Katakana Letter We Unicode Character

U+30F1 "ヱ" Katakana Letter We is a historical Japanese syllabary character representing the sound "we," which was once a distinct phoneme in older forms of Japanese but has since merged with the modern "e" sound, making it largely obsolete in contemporary writing. It is primarily used today in classical texts, some brand names, and stylistic or artistic contexts, such as in the name of the popular whiskey product "Yoichi" or the alternative spelling for "Ebisu." Despite its rarity, it remains an important part of the standard katakana set for representing historical or nonstandard pronunciations.