My latest post at Néojaponisme is Japan Enters the Typewriter Race, about Yamashita Yoshitarō and his big plans for katakana.

But romanizers and modernizers were not the only ones who wanted to rebuild Japanese in the Imperial years. The Kanamojikai (カナモジカイ, “Kana Character Society”), founded in 1920 and still active, were inspired by the same issues — our children waste too much time learning kanji, our writing system doesn’t fit properly down linotype wires, etc. — but had, in a way, a more radical program than other group worrying about these issues.