Kanji Abolishment

From UNESCO’s report, “About 97% of the world’s people speak about 4% of the world’s languages; and conversely, about 96% of the world’s languages are spoken by about 3% of the world’s people. (“Language Vitality and Endangerment”, a report by UNESCO, 2003, citing H. Russell Bernard,1996:142)” From this situation, it has been said more than half of the 7000 languages that spoken nowadays will be extinct by end of this century. Since the world is moving straight toward to the globalization, and the diversity of language is losing, it is necessary to consider about our language. In Japan, abolishment of kanji has been discussed for a long. Kanji is not so easy to learn and to use. Therefore, there are people who claim to write Japanese without

Japanese has a distinct language structure from any other languages that uses three basic scripts, kanji, hiragana, and katakana. ( Special issue: Aspect of the Japanese Writing System [Visible Language]/ p. 219) Using three characters in one language system is very unique, and this characteristic only appears in Japanese. Kanji is claimed to be a waste of time because learning and studying kanji is time-consuming. Japanese elementary school students learn more than 1,000 kanji in six years, and by end of the high school, students are demanded to use 2,136 kanji from joyo-kanji. Also, foreigners who study Japanese is increasing, but kanji is the biggest obstacle to learning. However, Japanese can give a different impression of its appearance from the usage of scripts. Like, in children’s book, there are few kanji will appear. Using hiragana mainly will make the readers feel easy. On the other hand, the book for the experts will be filled with many kanji that only understood by certain people. Also, Japanese is able to write in both vertically and horizontally. ( Nihon no moji [Japanese scripts]/p.5) Japanese has the big value with uniqueness and flexibility that comes from its complexity, and kanji plays the great role in that. Since there is importance to kanji, the abolishment of kanji will have the impact on the world not only

Preserving one’s culture is not so easy, and especially many languages are now endangered. Understanding the value of own languages and saving by the people who speak that languages are necessary because the languages are only preserved by the people who speak that language. As the reasons have been showed, the importance of the kanji in Japanese culture is obvious. To retain the culture and its history, kanji should be kept as it