According to a prediction made in the mid-20th century, Chinese characters were expected to vanish from Japanese sentences by the end of the 22nd century. This prediction was based on research on the usage rate of Chinese characters in Japanese sentences. However, this is now doubtful because although more than half a century has passed, the use of Chinese characters in Japanese is still widespread. This study examines the rates of Chinese character usage in Japanese sentences in the past three decades. Through the examination, this study concludes that the hypothesis of decreasing rates, in accordance with the prediction, was not supported because a year-by-year analysis of the usage tendencies suggested that the rates have not substantially decreased. Moreover, the analysis suggested the possibility of the rates becoming stable.

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Hit counts returned by search engines are known to be subject to problems such as temporal fluctuation and logical inconsistency. According to the survey which I have been conducting for some nine years since 2008, the extent of temporal fluctuation of hit counts returned by Google and Yahoo! JAPAN differs from period to period, and presently (autumn 2016) the situation seems to be changing from a relatively stable state to an instable one. There is not yet a sign of reduction in logical inconsistency of hit counts, either. Keywords: search engine, reliability of hit counts, temporal fluctuation, logical inconsistency, Google, Yahoo! JAPAN

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We demonstrate an example of visualization process of linguistic data with a combination of a scientific plotting software (Gnuplot) and a graphics editor (Adobe Illustrator).This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we explain how to use Gnuplot through constructing a line chart and fitting a binomial distribution to data points. In the second part, we use Adobe Illustrator to make a graph more visible. We can change the size of graph, the width of lines, and the text of axis labels and graph legends. Moreover, we insert a TeX-based expression image made by TeXclip into the graph with an arrow that points the solid line corresponding to the expression.

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