Spirit Scripts: Japan’s mysterious outcast alphabets medium.com

Over many centuries, Japan adapted Chinese characters to suit the needs and form of the Japanese language.
But to some, these foreign kanji remained a dirty smear on an otherwise pure Japanese culture.
Of course, Japanese is no less diminished by Chinese characters than English is by Latin letters or Hindu-Arabic numerals.
These letterforms fit a view of the Japanese language as sacred and Chinese characters as vulgar and profane.
But these scholars were still arguing against the ink of foreign letterforms fouling the pure wellspring of Japanese culture.