I'm thinking of this occurring sometime during the Meiji Era, but earlier is okay too. Historically, Vietnamese used Chinese characters, but it moved to the Latin script in the late 1800s and early 1900s with the encouragement of both French colonial administrators and eventually Vietnamese nationalists, who felt it would help improve literacy and promote Vietnamese independence. The idea of adopting a Western script for Japanese has occasionally been brought up over the years within Japan as a means of simplifying the process of learning the language. Could such a change take place, and what would the impact be for Japan and the Japanese language?