Most Japanese learners are told to wait until they have “learned the kanji” before reading. With the right material, you can read your first complete Japanese story within a month of starting.
The U.S. Foreign Service Institute puts Japanese in Category IV, its “super-hard” group: 88 weeks, about 2,200 class hours, for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency. It also marks Japanese with an asterisk as usually harder than the rest of that group. The verb comes last, modifiers precede the noun, politeness is built into verb forms, and every page mixes three scripts.
Kanji are best learned by meeting them hundreds of times in stories. The books below run from free graded readers to prize-winning novels, with the publisher’s level where given.
Three Scripts, and the Order to Learn Them
Kana first: a few weeks, and not optional
Hiragana and katakana are two syllabaries of 46 everyday characters each, writing the same sounds. Hiragana carries grammar (particles, verb endings) and native words; katakana is mostly for loanwords such as テレビ (terebi, television). Budget two or three weeks, until you no longer count strokes to tell シ from ツ.
Kanji: learned while reading, not before
The official list of everyday kanji, the jōyō kanji, has had 2,136 characters since 2010, and most have more than one reading. The first books on this list use very few kanji, with readings printed alongside.
Furigana: the training wheels built into the language
Furigana are small kana beside a kanji showing its reading: above it in horizontal text, to the right in vertical text. Learner books use them heavily; furigana on every kanji is called 総ルビ (sōrubi). They let you look up any word by sound.
Japanese has no spaces between words, so beginner readers often add spaces or keep sentences short. Most novels, newspapers and manga are printed vertically, top to bottom and right to left, so pages turn “backwards.”
Absolute Beginner: The Free Tadoku Readers
Free Tadoku graded readers (NPO Tadoku Supporters)
Level: from Pre-Starter and Starter upward, on the same scale as the paid series below.
NPO Tadoku Supporters, a Japanese non-profit promoting tadoku (多読, “extensive reading”), publishes free books on tadoku.org to read online, download as PDFs or print. Most have furigana, some are hiragana-only, some are nearly wordless picture stories, and many have narration audio or video.
Their scale:
- Pre-Starter and Starter: 200 and 350 words; present and past, questions, 〜たい (want to).
- Level 1: still 350 words, in longer books of 400 to 1,500 words.
- Level 2: 500 words; adds the dictionary form, the て form, the ない form and conditionals.
- Levels 3, 4 and 5: 800, 1,300 and 2,000 words.
Why it works: you understand almost all of each short, illustrated story, so you can read a lot. See extensive versus intensive reading.
What to watch for: the lowest levels feel too easy by design. Read several per level.
Graded Readers: Building Toward Real Books
Controlled vocabulary is explained in the best books by language level.
レベル別日本語多読ライブラリー (Japanese Graded Readers), ASK Publishing
Level: levels 0 to 4, following the Tadoku scale.
Written by NPO Tadoku Supporters and published by ASK Publishing: 86 books across levels 0 to 4, sold in packs by level, with furigana on kanji and audio (a CD plus an mp3 download).
Why it works: controlled vocabulary and grammar per level, with audio to confirm readings.
What to watch for: packs are expensive, so check libraries. Audio downloads may need a code from the book.
にほんご多読ブックス (Taishukan Japanese Readers), Taishukan
Level: levels 0 to 5.
A second Tadoku-scale series: 55 books in 10 packs, with downloadable audio. Its Level 5 goes beyond the ASK series.
Why it works: more books at the same levels before you move up.
What to watch for: also sold in sets. Buy one level, finish it, then decide.
Japanese Stories for Language Learners by Anne McNulty and Eriko Sato (Tuttle)
Level: upper beginner to intermediate.
Tuttle, 2018: five stories with Japanese and English on facing pages. Two folk tales (Urashima Taro, Yuki Onna) and three classics: Akutagawa’s The Spider’s Thread (蜘蛛の糸), Arishima’s “Oborekaketa Kyōdai” and Miyazawa Kenji’s Gauche the Cellist (セロ弾きのゴーシュ). Vocabulary lists, grammar notes, exercises and free online audio.
Why it works: a supported first contact with real literature, by authors Japanese children read at school.
What to watch for: ungraded texts, a jump from Tadoku. Check the English only when stuck; see our honest guide to parallel reading.
Intermediate: Learner Editions of Real Fiction
Short Stories in Japanese for Intermediate Learners by Olly Richards (Teach Yourself)
Level: CEFR B1 approaching B2, as the publisher states.
Published in 2022: eight original stories in different genres. Furigana appear on harder kanji and on the first appearance of common ones. Each chapter has a glossary of bolded words, a plot summary and comprehension questions; the audiobook is sold separately. There is no Japanese beginner volume in this series.
Why it works: furigana that disappear after first use push you to remember common kanji.
What to watch for: written for learners, not like a Japanese novel.
よつばと! (Yotsuba&!) by Kiyohiko Azuma
Level: upper beginner to intermediate. Learner guides such as Tofugu recommend it for learners moving from JLPT N5 and N4 toward N3.
Serialized since 2003, 16 volumes so far: a five-year-old girl discovers everyday life in a Japanese suburb. It won an Excellence Award at the 2006 Japan Media Arts Festival and the 2016 Grand Prize of the Osamu Tezuka Culture Award.
Why it works: everyday vocabulary, mostly in kana, with furigana on kanji and pictures that carry meaning.
What to watch for: casual spoken Japanese with contractions and sound effects, far from the polite forms courses teach.
Read Real Japanese Fiction, edited by Michael Emmerich (Kodansha)
Level: intermediate and above, as the publisher states.
Six stories by contemporary writers including Banana Yoshimoto, Hiromi Kawakami, Yoko Tawada and Otsuichi. Printed vertically as in Japan, with difficult passages translated on every double page, a built-in learner’s dictionary, notes, and a recording by a professional voice actress (a CD in earlier editions, a download now).
Why it works: unabridged fiction with help, and practice on vertical text before a novel.
What to watch for: literary texts by prize-winning authors. Expect to read each story twice.
Read Real Japanese Essays by Janet Ashby (Kodansha)
Level: intermediate and above.
The companion volume: essays by Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Yoko Ogawa, Keiichiro Hirano and others, in the same format.
Why it works: essays are shorter and more conversational than fiction.
What to watch for: cultural references; use the notes.
Short Stories in Japanese (New Penguin Parallel Text), edited by Michael Emmerich
Level: upper intermediate to advanced.
Eight contemporary stories, including Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Hiromi Kawakami and Yūko Tsushima, Japanese and English side by side, with notes.
Why it works: full literary texts, unabridged.
What to watch for: no audio, no graded vocabulary. Save it until Read Real Japanese Fiction feels manageable.
Your First Native Books
These were written for Japanese readers. If this is your first real book in any language, read your first book in a foreign language first.
魔女の宅急便 (Kiki’s Delivery Service) by Eiko Kadono
Level: intermediate. The publisher rates it for readers from the middle years of elementary school.
Fukuinkan Shoten, 1985: the novel behind the Studio Ghibli film, about a young witch who leaves home at thirteen and starts a flying delivery service. It won the Noma Award for Juvenile Literature and the Shogakukan Award for Children’s Literature; Kadono received the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2018.
Why it works: the film maps the story, and each episodic chapter fits one sitting.
What to watch for: the Fukuinkan children’s edition has some furigana and illustrations; the Kadokawa paperback has almost none.
星の王子さま (The Little Prince), translated by Naitō Arō
Level: intermediate.
Naitō Arō’s translation (Iwanami Shoten, 1953) is the one generations of Japanese readers grew up with, still in print in Iwanami’s children’s library.
Why it works: you likely know the story, and the chapters are short with everyday vocabulary.
What to watch for: older, slightly formal phrasing. Newer translations exist.
窓ぎわのトットちゃん (Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window) by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
Level: upper intermediate.
Kodansha, 1981: a memoir of the author’s unusual primary school in wartime Tokyo. It holds a Guinness World Record for more than 25 million copies printed and circulated by Kodansha, the most for an autobiographical memoir by a single author. Dorothy Britton’s English translation appeared in 1982.
Why it works: native adult Japanese in a child’s voice, in episodes of a few pages.
What to watch for: some 1940s vocabulary and customs.
キッチン (Kitchen) by Banana Yoshimoto
Level: upper intermediate.
Fukutake Shoten, 1988, usually with the novella Moonlight Shadow. It won the Kaien Newcomer Prize and the Izumi Kyōka Prize; Megan Backus’s English translation came out in 1993.
Why it works: short, in clear, modern, conversational sentences.
What to watch for: a book about grief, driven by feeling more than plot, so context helps less.
Haruki Murakami: 風の歌を聴け (Hear the Wind Sing) and ノルウェイの森 (Norwegian Wood)
Level: upper intermediate to advanced.
Start with Hear the Wind Sing (Kodansha, 1979, Gunzo Prize for New Writers), split into 40 brief chapters. Then Norwegian Wood (Kodansha, 1987), his most realistic novel and one of his most popular in Japan, translated into English by Jay Rubin.
Why it works: plain sentences in a style indebted to American fiction. Norwegian Wood has no fantasy, so context is easier to use.
What to watch for: Norwegian Wood is long. Read each chapter in Japanese before checking the English.
容疑者Xの献身 (The Devotion of Suspect X) by Keigo Higashino
Level: advanced.
Bungeishunjū, 2005: a detective novel that won the Naoki Prize and the Honkaku Mystery Award. Alexander O. Smith’s English translation was nominated for the 2012 Edgar Award for Best Novel.
Why it works: clean, functional prose and a plot that pulls you on.
What to watch for: police and mathematical vocabulary recurs. Learn those terms early.
坊っちゃん (Botchan) by Natsume Sōseki, free on Aozora Bunko
Level: advanced.
Sōseki’s 1906 comic novel about a hot-headed young teacher posted to a provincial school is one of Japan’s most-read classics. It is free on Aozora Bunko, a digital library founded in 1997 with more than 17,000 works whose copyright has expired or whose authors made them free.
Why it works: free, short for a classic, and funny. The online text gives readings for harder kanji.
What to watch for: over a century old, with different spelling conventions, kanji choices and vocabulary. Read it after the modern books.
How to Choose Your First Japanese Book
- You are still learning kana. Finish hiragana and katakana first.
- You read kana, but know only a few words. The free Tadoku readers at Pre-Starter and Starter level, with the audio.
- The free readers feel easy. The Japanese Graded Readers series and Taishukan Japanese Readers, one level at a time, plus Japanese Stories for Language Learners.
- You finish Level 3 or 4 readers comfortably. Olly Richards’ intermediate stories, Yotsuba&!, then Read Real Japanese Fiction.
- Learner editions feel manageable. 魔女の宅急便 and 星の王子さま, then 窓ぎわのトットちゃん and キッチン.
- You read those without constant lookups. Murakami, Higashino, and Sōseki on Aozora Bunko.
Habits for every level:
- Read the furigana, then try without them. On a kanji’s fifth appearance, cover the reading and test yourself.
- Look up by radical or handwriting when there are no furigana. Jisho.org, a free Japanese-English dictionary, finds a kanji by its components or by drawing, and tags words with their JLPT level.
- Read the news in easy Japanese. NHK runs a free simplified-Japanese news site for children and foreign residents, with furigana and audio.
- Do not look up everything. Needing the dictionary every other word means the book is too hard. See how to read without a dictionary.
- Listen while you read. Kanji readings are learned by sound as much as sight; see the reading-while-listening method.
Still choosing a language? Our language difficulty guide lays out the trade-offs, and our lists for Korean and Chinese cover the other two East Asian languages in the FSI’s hardest group.
The Bottom Line
Kana, then the free Tadoku readers, then the graded series. Kiki’s Delivery Service or The Little Prince as the first real book, then Yoshimoto, Murakami and Sōseki.
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