In the early history of writing, only a small group of upper class people wrote texts, and they used only Kanji, sometimes using them as logographs and sometimes as phonetic signs. Such a process must have been tortuous for a writer, and its product must have presented a reader with a formidable task, considering the fact that Japanese and Chinese are unrelated languages requiring a different set of words, grammatical morphemes, and word order in sentences.
The Japanese were compelled to create the simple phonetic script, Kana, and once created, Kana eased Japanese writing. A handful of women writers wrote mainly in Hiragana, but most writers mixed Kanji and Kana, using Kanji to write content words and Kana to write grammatical morphemes. Initially, the proportion of Kanji in a text tended to be as high as 90%, but over time it decreased. As shown in Figure 21-2, the use of Kanji declined in the hundred years between 1880 and 1980.
There are several possible reasons for the decline of Kanji use: Hiragana can replace Ateji ('assigned Kanji'); Katakana can replace some Sino-Japanese words, such as names of uncommon trees and animals; new words tend to be European loan words which are written in Katakana; and above all, in modern times the government has limited the number of Kanji for common use.
Will Kanji use decline further in the future? Now there is evidence that the modern trend of declining use of Kanji has halted. Even in Figure 21-2, the decline halted around 1960, after which it appears to have increased ever so slightly in two of the three sets of data. Recall that the Common Kanji list currently in use has added more Kanji to the earlier Temporary Kanji list of 1973. Since 1990, a few hundred additional Kanji have been allowed for people's names (table 18-2). In one survey, the proportion of Kanji in text, sampled every 10 years between 1906 and 1976, steadily declined from 46.8% in 1906 to 36.2% in 1956, but it remained stable thereafter--37.8% in 1966 and 38.0% in 1976. Indeed, appearance of Kanji in text may have increased recently, thanks to word processing that can readily convert words in Kana into Kanji. In the leading newspaper Asahi , some words (e.g., wakaru 'understand') that were always or usually written in Hiragana in 1969 were often written in a Kanji Hiragana mixture in 1989 (Numamoto 1992). The use of Kanji is no longer declining; it may even rise.
What do Japanese people think about Kanji? They have favorite Kanji.
Shoppers in a department store were asked to select one favorite Kanji among
100 randomly arranged in a list (Saiga 1978). Over 3,400 shoppers participated,
showing their interest in Kanji. And the five Kanji with the largest votes
were 
'love' ai, 
'pensive' sh, 
'sincere' sei,
'dream' yume, and 
'mind, heart' kokoro.
Three of the five Kanji contain the semantic component for kokoro
('mind, heart'). Obviously, these five Kanji were selected for their meanings,
all of which have something to do with psychological states, rather than
for their sounds or shapes, which do not show any obvious pattern.
What are the attitudes of Japanese people toward the question of keeping or abolishing Kanji? Primary and secondary school students who are struggling to master Kanji may wish Kanji to be abolished, whereas adults who have already mastered the official Kanji and are enjoying their benefits may wish to keep them. Most Japanese authors of books on the Japanese language seem to be in favor of, or resigned to, keeping Kanji.
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