Japan: Simplified characters or traditional?

Danny Bloom at Japundit hosts a quick but thorough discussion on the division over simplified Chinese characters (mainland China) and traditional characters (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Chinatowns worldwide): “What’s your take on all this? Will China's system take over, and if it does, will it have an impact on Japan's writing system?”

1 comment

  • Anatoli

    It may or it may not. As you can see Taiwan insists on using traditional characters, despite that not only mainland China but Singapore, Chinese diaspora in Malaysia and increasingly Chinatowns worldwide switch to simplified.

    Taiwan and Hong Kong are the strongholds of the traditional characters.

    In South Korea, Russia, Europe, Australia and New Zealand most Chinese schools already (or since long ago) teach simplified. Not sure about Japan.

    Japan may not change their own system but there are much less Kanji in the active use, anyway (compared to China/Taiwan), no point simplifying KIREI, if it is already simple enough in Hiragana.

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