Is using Kanji considered conservative or “old” in Japanese culture?

7 comments

1. No not at all.

   Without kanji Japanese is very hard to read. It’s usually a mix of kanji, hiragana and katakana. Each one has a role.

   In young children’s books (lower primary school) you see hiragana only.

2. No, it’s a fundamental part of the language.

   Writing in pure hiragana is extremely hard to read and gives of the impression the writer is a first or second grader.

3. No. It’s a part of the writing system.

   Using too many kanji might feel very dry and academic, using too few seems childish.

4. You might as well ask are upper case letters considered “old” in English culture, to which anyone would respond “wtf?”

5. Well I don’t think so, bot of course there are archaic Kanji or ways of writing that becane unpopular. But generally Kanji itself are far from outdated, although there is a trend to write some words in Katakana instead of Hiragana or Kanji, I don’t know if it’s a young people thing though.

6. There are unwritten rules kind of with regards to words that are usually written in hiragana. For example なる nobody would write 成る.

   寒く成る　✕

   寒くなる　◯

   食べ易い　✕

   食べやすい　◯

   何処に行く？　✕

   どこに行く？　◯

   此れは誰の物でしょう…　✕

   これは誰のものでしょう…　◯

   Also depends on the person too I suppose. Sometimes you can tell when a foreigner has written something when there’s as many kanji as possible in the sentence lol. Foreign people can be overzealous with kanji.

   (Hope my examples were correct haha)

7. As others are saying kanji is an essential part of the Japanese writing system just as capital letters are to English. That being said there are obsolete kanji that are not often used, so using those often might be considered “old”, just like using something like æ in English