Is there a way to make the grid visible and disabled at the same time? Whenever I disable the grid, the grid becomes invisible and the checkbox to toggle the visibility (in document properties) is grayed out...

Uuummmm.....well if you deselect Enable while Visible is still selected, it appears to be disabled and visible. But I don't understand why you would want a grid to be disabled and visible. It doesn't make sense. If it's disabled, it can't be visible, because it no longer exists (until you re-enable it). I suspect you might have some terminology confused. But rather then try to explain what everything means, it might be easier if you could explain why you would want a grid to be disabled and visible.

Do you maybe want to stop snapping to the grid? If that's it, then snapping is controlled separately. Go to the Snap control bar, which depending on your version of Inkscape, will either be along the top with the tool control bar, or along the right side of the Inksape window. Deselect the 1st button.

If it's not snapping though, could you please explain what you want to do ? Thanks

I already found two ways to solve this.

- Hold shift while dragging (slightly cumbersome because holding shift too soon while intending to begin a drag deselects the object)
- Disable grid snapping in the snap toolbar (weird that the snapping button in the document properties isn't logically linked to this)

The reason I want no snapping is because I want to approximately place kanji at the center of grid cells, and the kanji don't have a center handle or anything. Dragging a kanji aligns one of the many random control points to the grid.

Another (better) solution would be to distribute the kanji horizontally and vertically by a fixed amount, but the only action I can find is to distribute by the average distance, determined by the first and last object.

Oh, so you do mean snapping?
The grid and snapping are 2 different things. They aren't necessarily "logically linked". You can have a grid visible, but disable snapping. Look near the bottom of the snap control bar for the grid symbol, and deselect it. Now you have a grid, and nothing will snap to it. You could disable snapping altogether, or just disable snapping to a grid, but still be able to snap other things.

I have no idea what you mean about the "kanji". I'll assume it's an object that you want to center in a grid cell, and that's the problem you actually need to solve, rather than a visible and disabled grid?

The reason Align and Distribute won't work, is because it only works on objects that are on the canvas. The grid is only a guide to use in aligning things. It's not an object on the canvas. For example, if you print the image, the grid won't print. If you need a grid as part of the image, you'll have to either draw it, or use one of the extensions to draw it automatically.

I think the solution is to set up the grid so that the intersections of the grid lie in the center of your imaginary grid (the one where you want the kanjis in the middle of) (or the grid that you've drawn in the image). Then you can use snapping like this: Enable snapping, Snap to bounding box corners, Snap to center of bounding box, Snap to grid (4 buttons engaged, all other not). OR like this: Enable Snapping, Snap to nodes and handles, Snap to and from center of object, Snap to grid (4 buttons engages, all other not). That will cause the center of the kanji to snap to the grid intersections. And since you've place the grid intersections to be in the middle of the other grid cell, the kanji will be in the center of the cell.