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Article: Letter from... TokyoWriting may be on on the wall for written Japanese.
- Article from:
- The Birmingham Post (England)
- Article date:
- August 20, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Satoshi Watanabe and his fellow revolutionaries have a gripe most Japanese can relate to.
Writing Japanese is just too complicated, he says. The thousands of characters that must be learned just to read the evening paper is too much. It's time-consuming, inefficient.
So, Watanabe says, Japan should switch to something simpler, something more along the lines of an alphabet.
That's where he loses his audience. While most Japanese agree the writing system is a strain, hardly anyone would dream of changing things.
Blind momentum, scoffs ...