interestingasfuck

I think it's an indication that the written language is not reasonable for the modern age. Granted, Japanese has 2000 characters in everyday use, versus the 10,000 in Chinese, but each character could have up to six or seven different pronunciations based on the context, whereas I think Chinese has one or at most two.

The sticking point is that written Japanese can carry a lot of nuance. For a given word, you may be able to use different characters to emphasize certain meanings. Losing that would be traumatic, especially because the culture has a great deal of love and respect for their heritage.