How to Start Extensive Reading in Japanese, Level by Level
OBARA Hiroki · Developer
NPO Tadoku Supporters (NPOć€èšèȘć€èȘ), a Japanese nonprofit, publishes free graded readers for learners of Japanese in seven levels, from âStartâ to Level 5. A Start story uses about 200 words of vocabulary and runs to at most 200 characters. A Level 5 story uses about 2,000 words and runs from 8,000 to 25,000 characters. That ladder is the clearest map I know of for someone who has finished a textbook and wants to read real books, so this post is built around it.
The questions below are the ones most learners ask at this point. Should I use a dictionary or not? What should I read first? How much is enough? And is reading Japanese different from reading English this way? I have tried to answer each from published sources, and to say plainly where I am giving my own opinion.
What extensive reading means
Extensive reading means reading a lot of easy material for pleasure, rather than working slowly through a hard text. Richard Day and Julian Bamford set out ten principles for it in a well-known 2002 article, âTop Ten Principles for Teaching Extensive Readingâ in Reading in a Foreign Language. The first principle is that the reading material is easy. Others are that learners read as much as possible and choose what they want to read.
The Extensive Reading Foundationâs Guide to Extensive Reading puts a number on âeasyâ. It says that if students know about 98% of the words on a page, they can read quickly and with high comprehension. Between 90% and 98% the text is at an âinstructionalâ level: understandable, but you will still want to look up many words. Below 90%, one unknown word in ten, reading becomes slow and frustrating. The guide is written mainly with English in mind, but the idea carries over.
NPO Tadoku Supporters turns these ideas into four rules for Japanese: start with easy books, read without a dictionary, skip what you donât understand, and if a book isnât moving, switch to another one.
Dictionary or no dictionary
The âno dictionaryâ rule is the one people argue about most. I think it helps to see that both sides are describing different kinds of reading.
If you are reading a graded reader written within a 350-word vocabulary, the rule makes sense. Almost every word is one you know, the pictures carry the rest, and stopping to look things up would only slow you down. The ERF guide says the same thing in a practical way: if a learner is looking up words too often, the book is probably too hard and they should read something easier.
A book written for Japanese readers is another matter. Even a short childrenâs story on Aozora Bunko, the free library of out-of-copyright Japanese literature, was written for people who already know thousands of words. The ERF guide makes the same point about âauthenticâ books in English and recommends graded readers until those books stop being a struggle. For most learners, I think the first real books will sit in what the guide calls the âinstructionalâ zone, where looking up some words is normal and useful, as long as it doesnât take over. The rule I would suggest is to look up a word when it keeps coming back or when you have lost the thread of the story, and to guess the rest from context.
Japanese adds two problems that English learners donât have.
The first is word boundaries. Japanese is written without spaces, so before you can look up an unknown word you have to decide where it begins and ends. With a string of kana such as ăšăăăăă, that decision is itself part of the difficulty.
The second is kanji you cannot pronounce. In English you can at least sound out an unknown word and type it. In Japanese, if you donât know how to read ćă, you canât type it by sound, and a paper dictionary ordered by reading is no help. Furigana solves the reading but not the meaning. This is why many Japanese learners rely on pop-up dictionaries or apps that let you select the text itself, and why âno dictionaryâ feels harder to follow in Japanese than in English.
My own position, for what it is worth, is this. Follow the four rules strictly while you are on graded readers. Once you move to real books, allow the dictionary, but keep the reading moving.
What to read at each level
The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) is the most familiar scale for many learners, so I will use it here. Tadokuâs level page gives its own JLPT estimates, which I quote below. Treat them as rough guides, not exact equivalents.
Beginner (around N5 to N4)
The JLPTâs level summary describes N5 reading as understanding set phrases and sentences written in hiragana, katakana and basic kanji, and N4 as reading passages on familiar daily topics written with basic vocabulary and kanji.
At this stage, graded readers are the right material. Tadokuâs Start and Level 0 books are written horizontally to be easier for beginners, and Start books are meant to be read with the pictures and the recorded audio. Level 1 is listed as N5 and Level 2 as N4. Level 1 stories run 400 to 1,500 characters, and from Level 1 the books are printed vertically, as most Japanese books are.
Real books are too steep here. I would not try Aozora Bunko yet.
Intermediate (around N3)
The JLPT describes N3 reading as understanding concrete writing on everyday topics, getting the gist of newspaper headlines, and following slightly harder everyday texts if the meaning is paraphrased.
Tadokuâs Level 3 (N3) and Level 4 (N3 to N2) fit here. Level 3 stories run 2,500 to 6,000 characters with fewer pictures. Level 4 runs 5,000 to 15,000 characters and drops the katakana readings.
This is also the stage where the very shortest real books become possible. Japanese folk tales retold for children and the stories of Niimi Nankichi are mostly in kana and use short sentences. Knowing the story in advance, as many people do with Momotaro, is a real help. I listed thirty such works, roughly from easiest to hardest, in 30 Easy Japanese Classics on Aozora Bunko. The first one is about 900 characters long.
Upper intermediate and advanced (around N2 to N1)
The JLPT describes N2 as reading newspaper and magazine articles and plain commentary on a wide range of topics, and N1 as reading editorials and more abstract, logically complex writing, as well as following the details of a storyâs expression.
Tadokuâs Level 5 (N2 to N1) has stories of 8,000 to 25,000 characters with idioms and honorific language. After that, there is no ladder left, and real books are the material. Short stories by Akutagawa and Miyazawa Kenji, and then novels such as Natsume Sosekiâs Botchan, are natural next steps. The jump from a 25,000-character graded reader to an 88,000-character novel is large, so I think it helps to read several short stories in between.
How much to read
Neither Day and Bamford nor Tadoku give a single number for Japanese. The ERF guide says schools typically ask students to read about one book a week or more, and suggests building up from short periods of reading toward that.
Tadokuâs character counts make this concrete. A Level 2 story is 1,500 to 3,000 characters, short enough to finish in one sitting. If one sitting a day is too much, a few pages is still better than nothing. What matters in every source I read is volume over time, and the only way to get volume is to read things you enjoy and can finish.
How Japanese differs from English
Several things make extensive reading in Japanese feel different from English, even when the method is the same.
Two scripts, plus kanji. You can read an English sentence aloud even if you donât understand it. In Japanese, an unknown kanji can stop you from even pronouncing the sentence, which makes skipping harder.
Furigana. Books for children usually print readings next to most kanji, and books for adults only next to difficult ones. Furigana tells you how to say a word, not what it means, so a page full of furigana is not necessarily an easy page.
Old spelling. Many older works are printed in historical kana usage, where ăă can be written ăă”. Dictionaries look words up in modern spelling, so these editions are much harder for learners. On Aozora Bunko, each workâs card shows the spelling it uses, and æ°ćæ°ä»źć (new characters, modern kana) is the one to choose.
Vertical text. Most Japanese books are printed vertically, and Tadokuâs own readers switch to vertical text from Level 1. If you plan to read printed Japanese books, it is worth getting used to vertical lines at some point.
No spaces. As above, finding where a word ends is part of reading Japanese, and it affects how you use a dictionary.
Where Niho fits
I make Niho, a free reader for iPhone and iPad that holds the Aozora Bunko catalogue of more than 17,000 works. It is meant for the step after graded readers, not instead of them. If you are still on Tadokuâs Start to Level 2 books, those are the better choice, and Niho will feel too steep.
The shelf called âStart hereâ (ăŻăăăźäžć in Japanese) holds thirty short, plainly written works in rough order of difficulty, the same thirty as in the list linked above. Furigana is shown where the original edition has it, and you can turn it off. To look something up, you select the text roughly and tap Look up. Niho tries the longest dictionary word starting from your selection, so you donât have to find the exact word boundary yourself, and it traces conjugated forms back to the dictionary form, for example éŁăčăŸăă to éŁăčă. The word is saved with the sentence you found it in, and comes back later in a short quiz. Before you download an edition in old kana spelling, Niho tells you.
Two honest limits. Niho shows text horizontally only, so it wonât help you practise vertical reading. And it does not explain grammar. Niho vs Other Ways to Read Japanese Books compares it with Tadokuâs readers, browser dictionaries and paid services, and Getting Started with Niho walks through the first book.
Whatever you read on, I think the order matters more than the tool: easy books first, a lot of them, and real books once the easy ones feel easy.
