[anrakushi]

the 常用漢字 is a very limited set and many japanese are even forgetting those, the highest kanji test i think is 6000 kanji and as i said the japanese dictionary i use has reading for 12,000+ characters and is increasing all the time.

I'm not disputing with you that these thousands of characters are not used but a great proportion of chinese characters exist in Japanese. Regardless of whether they are now never used their readings will never disappear.