Elsewhere in Meiji ikō kokugo mondai ronshū 明治以降国語問題論集 ("Anthology of Meiji and later essays on the problem of the national language"), ed. Yoshida Sumio 吉田澄夫 and Inokuchi Yūichi 井之口有一, Itō Keisuke 伊藤圭介 argues in favor of punctuation in an essay entitled Nihonjin no ga/zoku bunshō ni okeru, kutō/danraku wo hyōji suru wo motte hitsuyō to sezaru wa, ichi ketsuji taru wo bensu ("An Argument, that it is a Flaw, that in the literary and popular Writing of the Japanese, it is not deemed necessary to indicate Punctuation and Paragraphs").

斯ノ如く。我邦人ノ作レル和文漢文。乃至日用書翰願書証文。其他一切ノ記録ニ於テ。句読段落ヲ欠クヲ以て。其主義の在ル所。往々明白ナラズシテ。読者反覆注目スルニアラザレバ。了解シ難キ者頗ル多シ。豈隔靴掻痒ノ遺憾ナラズヤ」。故ニ邦人一切ノ文書。女子ノ所作ト雖ドモ。悉皆標示法ヲ用ヰタキ者トス。政府布令文等ノ如キハ。最モ然アランコトヲ希フナリ。是レ文辞ニ疎キ。下等人民ト雖ドモ。明カニ其意ヲ領会シ。心得違ノ事ナカランヲ欲スレバナリ」。

In this way, because the Japanese and Chinese texts written by our countrymen, including casual notes, correspondence, agreements, and every other kind of record, lack punctuation and paragraph breaks, their intents and purposes are frequently unclear, and because readers do not go over them repeatedly, the great majority are difficult to comprehend. Is this not a great frustration?」 For this reason, it is to be desired that all the documents of our countrymen, be they the work of women or children, employ all the rules of punctuation. This is true most of all in the case of the official documents of government and the like, because it is desirable that even the lower classes of our nation, unlearned in letters, should be able to grasp the meaning of such documents clearly and without misunderstandings.」

The first time I saw one of his mid-paragraph 」 marks (usually a closing quotation mark in modern Japanese texts), I thought it was a typo, but no. Actually Itō proposes later in the essay that paragraph breaks be marked with 」, so it probably would have been fairer to render it as a pilcrow in the translation. (Note also that in any case my use of "paragraph" for danraku is problematic, and I should probably be inventing some new pseudo-Norman word to use instead, but ain't nobody got time for that.)

Also of note in this book of essays, but not quite interesting enough in the details to bother typing out and translating parts of Motora Yūjirō 元良勇次郎's "Ōdoku jūdoku no rigai ni oite," ("On the advantages and disadvantages of reading vertically and horizontally"), which as part of its examination of the relative readability of vertical and horizontal text is careful to allow for the effects of the nose size gap between Japan and the West. (Ultimately, though, horizontal wins.)