No, Japanese people do not seem pretty firmly convinced "that many native Japanese (especially the younger generations) cannot write by hand any more b/c they f

No, Japanese people do not seem pretty firmly convinced "that many native Japanese (especially the younger generations) cannot write by hand any more b/c they forget how". This problem is often reported on the news in Japan, and the problem is that people are forgetting things such as: 1) the correct stroke order for difficult kanji 2) the exact radicals in rarely used complex kanji. For example, 薄 and　簿　look similar, but the top radical is different. Confusing these rarely results in someone being unable to understand the desired meaning, but will elicit eye-rolling and chuckles. It's absolutely not the case that Japanese people can't write by hand anymore. A better analogy would be cursive writing. Most young Americans can no longer write in cursive. Their handwriting has become simple, inelegant, and they probably don't follow the "correct" way of writing their letters. But they can still write. Just as Japanese can still write.