Japan's Book Week: A Two-Week Plan to Finish One Japanese Book
Hiroki Obara · Developer
Today, October 27, is the first day of Japan’s Book Week, Dokusho Shūkan (読書週間). It runs for two weeks, until November 9. According to the organiser, the Japan Council for the Promotion of Reading (読書推進運動協議会), 2026 is the 80th Book Week. This year’s slogan is 「静かだけど、冒険中。」, which translates roughly as “Quiet, but on an adventure.”
Where Book Week came from
The council’s account goes like this. The first Book Week was held from November 17 to 23, 1947, two years after the end of the war, when the damage was still visible everywhere. Publishers, distributors, bookshops and public libraries joined forces, with newspapers and broadcasters helping, under the aim of building a peaceful, cultured nation through the power of reading. The dates followed the American Children’s Book Week. The response was strong, and from the second year the week was set at its present dates, October 27 to November 9, the two weeks around Culture Day on November 3. October 27 is also Japan’s Day of Letters and Print Culture (文字・活字文化の日).
In Japan, autumn is often called the season for reading. People speak of 読書の秋, “autumn for reading”, alongside 食欲の秋, “autumn for appetite”, and スポーツの秋, “autumn for sport”. The feeling that long autumn nights suit reading by lamplight is old, and a line from the Tang poet Han Yu, often given in Japanese as 「灯火稍く親しむべし」 (“the lamp grows dear again”), is the one usually quoted. Around this time, libraries and bookshops often put up the Book Week poster, which the council publishes each year.
For a Japanese learner, two weeks is a good length to finish one book. One week is too short, and a month is long enough for your interest to fade halfway.
Choosing one book for two weeks
Here are three options from Aozora Bunko, matched to rough JLPT levels. The lengths are counted in the modern-spelling editions (新字新仮名), leaving out furigana, notes and spaces. More on levels is in Which Japanese Classics Can You Read at Each JLPT Level?.
| Level, roughly | Work | Length | Per day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Around N3 | Several children’s stories by Niimi Nankichi or Miyazawa Kenji | About 3,500 to 5,500 characters each | One story a day |
| Around N2 | Miyazawa Kenji, 銀河鉄道の夜 (Night on the Galactic Railroad) | About 38,000 characters, 9 chapters | About 2,000 to 4,000 characters |
| Around N1 | Natsume Sōseki, 坊っちゃん (Botchan) | About 88,000 characters, 11 chapters | One chapter a day |
Around N3, one long book is not the only way. Finishing several short stories in two weeks works well. 手袋を買いに, ごん狐 and 注文の多い料理店 are each around 5,000 characters.
Botchan at one chapter a day takes 11 days and leaves three spare. I wrote about it in Reading Natsume Sōseki as a Japanese Learner.
Below, I build a schedule for the middle option, Night on the Galactic Railroad. About 17% of the text is kanji, and much of it is kana. On the other hand, the scenes shift a lot and the story is not easy to follow. It suits a slow two weeks.
Night on the Galactic Railroad in two weeks
The chapters are not the same length. The last one, 九、ジョバンニの切符 (Giovanni’s Ticket), is about 19,500 characters, half of the whole work. So the first half goes chapter by chapter, and the last chapter is split over five days.
| Day | What to read | Characters |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 27 (Tue) | 一、午后の授業 | About 2,000 |
| Oct 28 (Wed) | 二、活版所 / 三、家 | About 2,600 |
| Oct 29 (Thu) | 四、ケンタウル祭の夜 | About 2,700 |
| Oct 30 (Fri) | 五、天気輪の柱 / 六、銀河ステーション | About 3,600 |
| Oct 31 (Sat) | 七、北十字とプリオシン海岸 | About 4,000 |
| Nov 1 (Sun) | 八、鳥を捕る人 | About 3,900 |
| Nov 2 (Mon) | Rest, or reread a chapter from one to eight | |
| Nov 3 (Tue) | 九、ジョバンニの切符 (1/5) | About 3,900 |
| Nov 4 (Wed) | Chapter 9 (2/5) | About 3,900 |
| Nov 5 (Thu) | Chapter 9 (3/5) | About 3,900 |
| Nov 6 (Fri) | Chapter 9 (4/5) | About 3,900 |
| Nov 7 (Sat) | Chapter 9 (5/5) | About 3,900 |
| Nov 8 (Sun) | Spare | |
| Nov 9 (Mon) | Spare, and what to do after |
There are three spare days because you will fall behind somewhere. When you do, move that day’s part to the next day and catch up with a spare day.
Up to chapter five, the story stays with Giovanni’s school, his home and the town, and there is no railway yet. With chapter six, 銀河ステーション, everything changes. If your energy drops in the first week, try to reach chapter six.
For the last chapter, one option is to split by scene rather than by character count. The points where passengers get on or off the train are natural places to stop.
Reading each day
You can read the day’s part in one sitting, or split it between morning and evening. What matters is knowing how far you have read. If you tick off each date in the schedule, you can see where you are in the two weeks.
You don’t need to look up every unknown word. One approach is to look up words the story depends on and words that come up again and again on the same day, and to keep going past the rest. I wrote more on this in How to Start Extensive Reading in Japanese.
After you finish
When you finish on November 9, there are three things to try.
First, sum up the story in one sentence. Japanese or your own language is fine. If you can, you followed the plot.
Second, reread one chapter you liked. If you open the first chapter you read two weeks earlier, you may find you now know words you didn’t. You can also try that reread without furigana. I wrote about that in When to Stop Using Furigana.
Third, choose your next book. Book Week ends, but if you read a book of the same length on the same schedule, the next one will be done in two more weeks.
Reading your Book Week book in Niho
I make Niho, a free reader for iPhone and iPad that holds the Aozora Bunko catalogue of more than 17,000 works.
On the Discover screen, search for 銀河鉄道の夜 or the author’s name, without a connection. A work’s detail screen shows its length in characters, so you can tell before downloading whether it fits in two weeks. Night on the Galactic Railroad is also in 30 Easy Japanese Classics on Aozora Bunko for Learners.
Your place is saved for each book, and you continue from the same sentence in any of the three views, Pages, Scroll and Chat. If you split a day between morning and evening, the book opens where you stopped. In the last chapter you can record that you finished the book.
Select a word and tap Look up to see its meaning and JLPT level. Looked-up words are saved to your Word Book with the sentence you met them in, and each book in your Library has a Words from this book list. Going through that list after you finish is a quick way to look back on the words you met in those two weeks. Saved words also come back in the Quiz. The interface is available in 16 languages, including English.
Furigana is shown only where the source edition has it, and you can turn it off. Niho shows text horizontally only, not vertically. Getting Started with Niho walks through your first book.
