Been lurking on this thread for a while, and one thing still baffles me.

How does kanji 'triple work' on computer? It's the exact same key-strokes as it would be to enter hiragana or romaji and the computer picks the kanji FOR you. Also Kanji are a total blessing for text messaging. Cuts the word count down enormously.

The Korean's developed their Hangul system due to the illiteracy of their population due to complexity of the Chinese characters.

If Japan has a 99.0%+ literacy rate, what's the purpose of dumbing down their system?

That's rhetorical... Dumbing it down for the dumb foreigners...

Heh, yet again another discussion where everyone seems angry.

Anyway, I can understand people defending the language for cultural reasons, but for PRACTICAL reasons, there could be better alternatives,
Imagine how the japanese typewriter would look like if they used another writing system.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE KANJI, I doubt there is a better looking and intricate system, but it is ILLOGICAL.

should we have a cultural cringe just by the fact that mandarin chinese has a simpler grammar than english and mandarin happens to be as efficient as english? enough of my pointless ranting.

you can say that everything that a human being expresses is illogical or better way to put it, inefficient. i would say arbitrary instead as we human beings are so righteously imperfect and naturally irrational. how would you tell when a part of a certain language is illogical or not? i do not know.

Perhaps when it makes the NATIVE speakers struggle with it?
For example: Japanese names must be written both in katakana and kanji, The Rendaku((連濁), and many others, which make life harder.

The difficulty of OTHER languages, isn't the case, we are talking about writing systems.

Kind of ironic that people interested in a culture where the very pretense is politeness "seem" to come off as exactly the opposite. Although, less than 10% of communication is the actual words used so maybe the insults and slurs being hurled around here are said in a lovingly, and whimsical type tone. (heh....)

Yes, this is probably the reason for the stated poll.

A few quotes from established "experts" on the Japanese culture who point out this same fact:

Jay Rubin (Professor of Japanese Literature at Harvard University) quotes in his book "Making Sense of Japanese" George Bailey Sansom's (historian of pre-modern Japan particularly noted for his historical surveys and attention to Japanese society) astute observance that the sounds of Japanese are:

"simple and few in number, are very well suited to notation by an alphabet, and it is perhaps one of the tragedies of Oriental history that the Japanese genius did not a thousand years ago rise to its invention. Certainly when one considers the truly appalling system which in the course of the centuries they did evolve, that immense and intricate apparatus of signs for recording a few dozen little syllables, one is inclined to think that the western alphabet is perhaps the greatest triumph of the human mind."

Now, I wouldn't think it proper or logical (which is ironic considering the Kanji system IS very illogical) to remove kanji from the Japanese culture because it is one of the most dramatic (and traumatizing heh) cultural aspects to a foreign person.

Can you explain to me how English is logical?

Hell, just explain to me why the letter "a" is pronounced "a"??

How is that logical? Can you explain that to me??

every language is not perfect. get over it.

I don't think its very realistic to expect kanji to disappear from Japan, but some Koreans seem to laud its removal from their writing as well.