Kuzushiji-MNIST is a drop-in replacement for the MNIST dataset (28x28 grayscale, 70,000 images). Since MNIST restricts us to 10 classes, the authors chose one character to represent each of the 10 rows of Hiragana when creating Kuzushiji-MNIST. Kuzushiji is a Japanese cursive writing style.
Source: Deep Learning for Classical Japanese Literature Image Source: https://github.com/rois-codh/kmnist
