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The Status of Chinese Characters and Written Chinese in Japan circa 1868
CAO Wen
2014, 0(4):
74-88.
By the mid- nineteenth century the modernization movement that began in European gradually had spread to East Asia． Unlike China，after some initial wavering，Japan steadfastly followed the European path of modernization． Putting all its effort in this direction，Japan quickly faced the following issue:What language should be used to educate the people? Therewasalso the question of how the modernization Japanese would treat Chinese characters and the Japanese kana syllabary．Public opinion was divided between those who wanted to abandon Chinese characters completely and those who thought amount of Chinese used could be appropriately reduce．Based on the author s observations，when the modernization of education had yet to be launched in the 1860s，the reformers who advocated the radical reform of kana syllabary and Western languages as national language were unable to obtain the support of the government or the people，and even moderate reformers like Fukazawa Yukichi who supported reform could not obtain support for Japanese society.Japanese intellectuals had yet to advocate language reform as part of initial Westernizing reform，and instead they advocated the power of basic social reforms．
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