alt Hacker News>and Japan values and tries to preserve their history and culture quite a lot
Has to be said though that reform can be interpreted in exactly that way too, as revitalization. Hangul for example is also a kind of patriotic achievement. I've even heard, and that was coming from a Japanese friend (who speaks both languages): "we have the world's best and most logical writing system and the most illogical right here next to each other". And in the language department and the origins of their writing systems they're in a fairly comparable boat, just went in two very different directions.
I think Hangul worked because it was adopted at a time of mass increases in literacy. All those poor people who never wrote before didn't have any attachment to Chinese characters, and soon significantly outnumbered any monks, nobles, bureaucrats and merchants that were attached to them.