>>31910182I've seen Japanese and non-Japanese having no trouble with Kanji and yet whenever I hear about the Japanese language everyone brings up how many Japanese people can't read them.
I'm unfamiliar with Japanese but to my understanding, the biggest difference between those that understand them and those that don't is "training wheels". In many contexts, people learn the word with the Kanji without really paying attention to it or by simply reading the top text(above Kanji there is hiragana to show you how it is pronounced sometimes). Furthermore, technology that "corrects" your hiragana and katakana automatically into the appropriate kanji doesn't help people learn them. It does the opposite.
Thus people who decide to learn Japanese, feel the need to take off the training wheels and Japanese who have to study a lot from older textbooks, books etc don't get the help from technology others get. And given how dependant Japan is on technology, it feels like this is the reason that many Japanese people don't understand Kanji. They simply don't have to. Their phones, PCs and writers do it for them.