Classes and seminars on the finer points of Chinese characters abound. Penmanship schools for adults are a well-established business. The spread of computers and word processors with kanji software has been a godsend for the legions of Japanese who lack confidence in their handwriting skills. To write Japanese electronically, you type in the sound of a Chinese character using one of the phonetic alphabets. The computer provides a list of characters or character combinations matching that sound, and you select which one to use.
Experts say even that is a mixed blessing.
Flaws notwithstanding, kanji has its defenders. Biten Yasumoto, a professor of linguistic psychology at Tokyo's Sanno University, said that once memorized, kanji give readers a more direct shot of meaning than words written with an alphabet. This is partly because many characters are pictographs, devised to symbolically represent the word they stand for. Others say the real reason Japan should stick with kanji has nothing to do with its pragmatic value. For them, the true worth of kanji is simply its beauty.