Japanese pitch accent

Japanese pitch accent (高低アクセント, kōtei akusento) is a feature of the Japanese language that distinguishes words by accenting particular morae in most Japanese dialects. The nature and location of the accent for a given word may vary between dialects. For instance, the word for "river" is [ka.waꜜ] in the Tokyo dialect, with the accent on the second mora, but in the Kansai dialect it is [kaꜜ.wa]. A final [i] or [ɯ] is often devoiced to [i̥] or [ɯ̥] after a downstep and an unvoiced consonant.