Proposal to Abolish Kanji - Kanjigoishi

…The Roman alphabet became an issue for Japanese people after the Meiji Restoration, that is, after the Roman alphabet (national characters) theory was advocated, which suggested that the Roman alphabet should be adopted as the future writing system for Japanese. In his petition, Proposal for the Abolition of Chinese Characters (1867), followed by Proposal for the Promotion of National Literature and the Abolition of Chinese Characters (1874), Maejima Hisoka argued that “the use of national characters today should be the same as the use of Roman characters.” This marked the beginning of a language reform movement accompanying the modernization of Japan, which was subsequently promoted by scholars of mathematics and physics as the Roman alphabet movement, but after World War II, as the national character reform progressed, Roman alphabet education was successfully introduced into elementary schools. …

*Some of the terminology explained in relation to the "Proposal to Abolish Kanji" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…日本人にとってローマ字が問題になるのは明治維新以後，すなわち，将来の日本語の文字としてローマ字を採用すべきだという〈ローマ字(国字)論〉が唱えられて以後のことである。　前島密（ひそか）が建白書〈漢字御廃止之議〉(1867)に次ぐ〈興国文廃漢字議〉(1874)において，〈今国字ヲ用フルハ直ニ羅馬（ローマ）字ヲ用フルニ如（し）カズ〉と主張した。日本の近代化に伴う言語改革の運動がここに始まり，以後，ローマ字運動として，主として数学･物理学系の学者たちによって推し進められたが，第2次大戦後，国字改革が進むなかで，小学校にローマ字教育をとり入れることに成功した。…

※「漢字御廃止之議」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典 第２版について | 情報