Let's take a random Japanese word. Kitai. Depending on how it's written it can mean: Expectation, or gas, or fuselage.
Or Taiki. It can mean: Stand-by, or atmosphere, or big bowl, or squad flag.
Taiji. It can mean extermination. Or fetus. Or confrontation. It's also a boy's name.
Most of these words were coined in the Meiji era. Meiji reformers tried to invent native equivalents of European words. In doing so they turned to Chinese word roots and used those.
Japan isn't the only nation who tried this approach. For example, Turkish linguists used Arabic roots to coin their versions of European words. Like müstemleke for colony. But those clashed with the vovel structure of Turkish. They also threatened to turn Turkish into a gobbledygook version of Arabic.
They were later replaced with words based on native roots. Like sömürge (from sömür "exploit") for colony. A state sponsored regulatory body, like France's Académie Française, was set up for that purpose. This body did decades of language research; resurrecting obsolete Turkish words, giving them new meanings.
Meiji reformers coined words haphazardly. At times, two or three words appeared in the press for the same thing. Unlike Chinese, Japanese is a non-tonal language with few syllables. Rely on Chinese borrowings and you get a synonym invasion, all your new words sound the same. Japan did exactly that, INJURING her language.
by Key_Tomatillo9475