How has the percentage of writing using each script changed since 1945? With
script reform, increasing influx of loanwords, and stylistic choices, several
factors affect how much certain parts of the Japanese script are used in
writing. Modern Japanese is very different from how it looked in 1945, by any
measure.

Taking this into the context of my question, what proportion of words used in
writing are written in hiragana, katakana, and kanji? I've been unsuccessful
in finding any information on this so far. Keeping in mind that this has
nothing to do with whether we agree or disagree with the changes that have
happened (after all, language is just communication whatever words you use),
does there exist data for something like:

```

    % Words by script in 1945:
    Hiragana: .%
    Katakana: .%
    Kanji: .%
    
    % Words by script in 2015:
    Hiragana: .%
    Katakana: .%
    Kanji: .%
    
```

Any sources of written language is fine, whether newspapers (the easiest to
find), journals, handwritten letters, websites and so on.
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question
words kanji katakana orthography hiragana
How has Japanese kanji and kana usage changed since 1945?
I don't know how to help with hiragana and kanji, but I can help with
katakana. The Katana alphabet's word count has increased massively, but there
is little empirical data to prove their increase in such writings. The
increase of katakana words in Japanese writing poses a problem for foreign
learners of Japanese whose L1 is English.

I hoped I helped. :)

This might help with kanji
<http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol12/iss3/premaratne.html>
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I believe one can write a program to do this, but you can also estimate usage
in the 2010s by using Table 5.9 of this
[book](https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=-7Z-GA73MMAC&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90) and
assuming that the ratio of katakana to hiragana usage hasn't changed much
since 1985 (hiragana remains dominant because most okurigana and particles are
written in hiragana, although this assumption may underestimate % katakana
considering the influx of loan words since), and with the Kanji usage
represented by Figure 1 of this
[article](http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol12/iss3/premaratne.html).

As for the 1945 proportion, kanji and katakana were mostly used based on the
[Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#Usage), but because
of my limited exposure to these documents, I cannot provide a good estimate.
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answer