Most characters in the world are phonetic. The first characters that have been widely used in Japan since 6th Century were the Chinese characters which are ideographic. Because it was difficult to express all of the Japanese language, Japanese people created phonetic characters of “Kana” in 7th Century. Modern Japanese people use a mixture of Chinese characters and Kana.

East Asian countries using Chinese characters, such as Japan, China and Korea, have learned the difference in national power from the West. They thought they were culturally down because they used characters with too many strokes.

Someone said, “All Japanese people should speak French.”

The above-mentioned countries have begun to reduce the strokes of Chinese characters. The People’s Republic of China uses Chinese character of fewer strokes than Japan. North Korea completely abandoned Chinese characters and only uses Korean characters. In the newspapers in South Korea, we can slightly find Chinese characters.

I think Japanese language is very suitable for reading. Since the important words are Chinese characters, I can understand the general meaning of a book by only looking at Chinese characters. Through writing, Japanese people can communicate with Chinese people.

I think it is good to use Chinese characters. I believe that the merit of using Chinese characters will be reconsidered in this digital era.