Re: why they added Vietnamese to the set
I've done some work for a Japanese school, and the founder - a professor of education - says that not dropping kanji was a terrible mistake, because using them makes Japanese orthography ridiculously complicated.
Remember that Japanese doesn't just use kanji with the Chinese meaning; it also uses them for completely different Japanese words which just happen to sound a bit similar. Hence, for example, the symbol for "tree" also means "Thursday" in Japan, but not in China. It's a complete mess.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
