Different ways of enumeration Japanese seems to have multiple ways of enumerating sequences. The basic one is ordinal numbers: * Arabic (Indian) numbers like in English: 1,2,3 * classic Chinese numbers: etc. * special legal numerals: etc. * special version of “one”/“first” can be used The “letters”: * Latin alphabet (a, b, c, etc.). * goujon order (AFAIK usually katakana vowels: ); I’ve seen this used in some dictionaries and scientific papers. * iroha order () - not sure if actually used Then there are some specialized ones: * two-volume book: * three-volume book: * three sizes (S,M,L): And something I discovered today: * Four-item sequence (ABCD): , apparently originating from the Chinese sexagenary year cycle Are there any others? What are the situations you would use one over the other?

I think you have already listed all of the common and not-so-common ones.

*
*
*
* (usually katakana)
* (explained here)
* 1 2 3 / A B C / a b c / I II III / i ii iii



These letters are often enclosed in parentheses or circles.

is still widely used in legal documents, dictionaries and such. It's at least much more common than . You can check this "pathological" example of ; they used up all the katakana and started to use , and so on!

() is only for two- or three-volume books. () can be used in a similar manner (example), but it's very rare.