string can phone

The difficulties of learning the Japanese language are well-documented, and possibly no task is more daunting to the novice than learning its written form, kanji. The complications of their very language became a detriment to Japanese office managers, who pride themselves on utmost efficiency and productivity. A way to write faster was needed. They saw how the typewriter had increased the productivity of the American officeplace, but American typewriter design was obviously impossible to use with the massive Japanese character set, which can consist of as many as 50,000 characters. The quest to create a kanji typewriter led to a complete re-examination and streamlining of the Japanese language. We at SCP salute the editors of The Book and the Computer who have superbly documented the evolution of the Japanese writing machine as part of their series, Japanese in the Age of Technology.