Yes and no. Chinese is even more limited in sound. Both however write the corresponding Chinese sign onto their hand during conversation in order to facilitate communication. Hiragana was a writing system for women (they were not allowed to use Kanji) in order to be able to write, while katakana comes from a sect in order to make sense out of the Buddhist texts written in Chinese. Both languages are fundamentally different...

In Japanese there is actually no need for the Kanji imo, but it would make the language much much muuuuch more complicated to write...