[jerf]

I've studied kanji to some degree. I'm not a "master", but I am aware of the way it resolves a lot of ambiguities in Japanese.

But that does not on its own mean that Japanese couldn't evolve out of Kanji. It is not the case that if Kanji goes away, the entire rest of the language MUST stay static. It in fact would not. It would begin a multi-decade process of adjustment to the new issues.

It has happened before in other contexts, and it will happen again. There's a lot of signs that Chinese is on the verge of such a change (on a decadal time scale), which carries somewhat different baggage, but roughly the same amount of it.

What really throws the wrench into the whole thing is computers, and I don't just mean that it will simply speed up or slow down such a change, but that it could send all of this flying out in an entirely new direction. If we're all wearing augmented reality goggles full time in 20 years, what will happen to ideograms if every ideogram you see comes with floating pronunciation guides, and your googles can also translate phonetic spellings transparently in real time back into kanji/ideograms? Could languages like English start growing something like ideograms, presumably descended from modern-day emoji, if computers erase the disadvantages of emoji that cause languages to largely go alphabetic thousands of years ago?

What I absolutely do know is this: In 50 years, no language will be the same as it is today. Guessing what the changes will be, especially in a rapidly evolving novel landscape, is really hard. I don't think kanji/ideograms being seriously diminished is off the table.