[\[image\]](https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%B0%BD%EC%94%A8%EA%B0%9C%EB%AA%85#/media/%ED%8C%8C%EC%9D%BC:Japanese_Name_Change_Bulletin_of_Taikyu_Court.jpg)
The image is a bulletin from 大邱(テグ) district court in Korea during the Japanese colonial period in 1940s. It’s a more interesting read if you know both Korean and Japanese.
But apart from Korean, here are some things I noticed about written Japanese from that time.
* Horizontal writing is also right-to-left. The sentence at the top is 期限は刻々に迫る八月十日限り今熟慮断行の時, written backwards in today’s standards.
* Traditional kanji is used, from obvious ones like 斷-断 to subtle ones such as 樣-様 and 內-内
* What is よう nowadays is やう and だろう nowadays is だらう. Probably a similar sound shift as (ありがたく -> ～たう -> ～とう)
* 法院 is used to mean 裁判所 in modern Japanese. In modern Korean, 法院 is the general term for “court” and 裁判所 only has some special usage.
* 思う and 考える is in the passive form, such as 思われます in the last part of number 2 and 考えられて居る人 in number 5.
In the Korean part, 생각, while it doesn’t have a Sino-origin, is written as 生覺, probably related with an old Japanese word 生覚え.
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Most horizontal writing in Chinese is also left-to-right now, but occasionally older signs have them right-to-left. So it’s not a Japanese only thing.
Yes, やう、だらう、ありがたう becoming よう、だろう、ありがとう are all the same phonological process. To be more precise, やう was written and (probably?) pronounced like /yau/, but by 1940s the pronounciation would have already changed to /you/ while the writing stayed as やう. Therefore you could say that this is the use of 歴史的仮名遣い. On the left there is also シマセウ for しましょう.
You could say that 思う and 考える are in passive form (受身) but to be more precise they are in “self-happening” form (自発). It’s just that 受身 and 自発 historically uses the “same” 助動詞「る•らる」, corresponding to modern-day「れる•られる」. 自発 is used for emotions and inner feelings, therefore only in certain words like 「思う•考える•泣く•偲(しの)ぶ」.
Interesting that the hanja for 생각 is considered ateji. I always thought it was a Sino-origin word since to me it sounds like 思考(si1 kao3, しこう).