19世80年代，在日本，西学、 汉学之争仍是焦点。当时有些人以为，欲兴近代教育，当废弃汉字；若废弃汉字，日本恐将与自己通过汉学建立起来的学术思想发生割裂。而在民间舆论未朝着一个方向发展之前，于文字文体改良，日本政府虽做了些许尝试，但对于汉字汉文的态度并未做出改变。反映在小学教科书的编纂上就是，虽然在小学低年级阶段，尽量不用汉字，代之以假名，但就小学阶段所应掌握的汉字数量而言，并未减少，只不过汉字学习被集中到了小学高年级阶段。这一现象印证了日本政府在这一时期，对于汉字汉文何去何从，仍保持着谨慎态度。

During the 1880s，the controversy between Western and Chinese Learnings was still a key issue in Japan. It was necessary to abandon Kanji(Chinese scripts)in order to develop modern education. If  Kanji were abandoned，Japan worried about that Japanese academic thought based on Chinese learning would be dissevered. Before the public opinions reached certain consensuses，Japanese government in many ways tried to reform the writing system，but its attitudes towards Kanji and Chinese literature did not change. As far as the compilation of the textbooks of elementary school was concerned，Kanji was not used as possible in the early stages. Instead，Hiragan a or Katakan awas used. However, the number of the Kanji that elementary school students had to master did not decrease and they had to learn those Kanji in their senior stage of elementary school. This phenomenon verifies that the Japanese government was still cautious of Kan ji’s future during this time period.