The Iroha (いろは?) is a Japanese poem, probably written in the Heian era (AD 794–1179). Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian Period. The first record of its existence dates from 1079. It is famous because it is a perfect pangram, containing each character of the Japanese syllabary exactly once. Because of this, it is also used as an ordering for the syllabary, in much the same way that the A, B, C, D... sequence traces its origin back to the Phoenician alphabet and its Semitic predecessors.