Which Japanese Classics Can You Read at Each JLPT Level?
Hiroki Obara · Developer
Since its 2010 revision, the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) has not published its Test Content Specifications, the document that used to list vocabulary, kanji and grammar items by level. The official FAQ explains that the goal of studying Japanese is to communicate, and that publishing such lists was judged not to fit that goal. What the JLPT offers instead is its level summary, which describes in words what a learner can do at each level.
So there is no official answer to “which novel can I read at N3?” Still, when you choose a book, some kind of guide helps. For this post I took eight well-known works from Aozora Bunko, the free library of Japanese literature, counted their length and their share of kanji, and thought about where each one becomes a reasonable start.
What to measure
Some things that make a book hard can be counted, and some can’t.
Length and kanji share can be counted. Length decides whether you can get to the end. The share of kanji tells you roughly how often you will meet a character you can’t read when there is no furigana.
Harder to count are how old the vocabulary is, how the sentences are built, and how much furigana there is. Furigana depends on the edition Aozora Bunko typed in, not on the work itself. Take The Restaurant of Many Orders (注文の多い料理店). The edition in modern kana, based on a Shinchō paperback, has about 106 furigana readings. The edition in old kana, based on a Chikuma collected works, has about 57. Same story, different reading experience.
Eight works, counted
I counted the modern-spelling (新字新仮名) edition of each work on Aozora Bunko, leaving out furigana, typists’ notes, spaces and the edition details at the end. 々 is counted as kanji. The numbers are my own counts, rounded.
| Work | Author | Characters | Kanji share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 手袋を買いに (Buying Mittens) | Niimi Nankichi | about 3,500 | 22% |
| ごん狐 (Gon the Fox) | Niimi Nankichi | about 4,800 | 15% |
| 注文の多い料理店 (The Restaurant of Many Orders) | Miyazawa Kenji | about 5,400 | 17% |
| 蜘蛛の糸 (The Spider’s Thread) | Akutagawa Ryūnosuke | about 2,900 | 26% |
| 走れメロス (Run, Melos) | Dazai Osamu | about 9,800 | 26% |
| 羅生門 (Rashōmon) | Akutagawa Ryūnosuke | about 5,700 | 28% |
| 坊っちゃん (Botchan) | Natsume Sōseki | about 88,000 | 28% |
| こころ (Kokoro) | Natsume Sōseki | about 160,000 | 28% |
What surprised me was how flat the adult works are. Rashōmon, Botchan and Kokoro all sit around 28%. The big gap is between stories written for children and stories written for adults. Among the adult works, I think the difference in difficulty comes from the age of the words, the length of the sentences and the length of the book, not from the amount of kanji.
Up to N4
At this stage I think Aozora Bunko is still too steep. Even the shortest work in the table runs to nearly 3,000 characters, with no vocabulary control for learners. The JLPT describes N4 reading as being able to “read and understand passages on familiar daily topics written in basic vocabulary and kanji.” Modern literature sits outside that. Graded readers are the right choice here, and I wrote about their levels in How to Start Extensive Reading in Japanese, Level by Level.
Around N3
Stories written for children are the first candidates. Gon the Fox is only 15% kanji, and most of the text is kana. The Restaurant of Many Orders moves forward through two gentlemen reading a series of notices on the restaurant’s doors, and the repetition makes it easy to guess what comes next. Buying Mittens is short: a mother fox and her cub.
More kana does not always mean easier, though. A line made mostly of kana hides where one word ends and the next begins. You will also meet dialect and old words. Gon the Fox uses several words from village life that are rarely heard now. If you can follow the story, that is enough.
Around N2
This is where short stories for adults come within reach. The Spider’s Thread is short, about 2,900 characters, and shaped like a fable, which makes it a good first adult story. Run, Melos is longer at about 9,800 characters, but the story runs straight ahead and you will rarely lose track of what Melos is doing.
The JLPT’s N2 description talks about understanding newspaper and magazine articles, commentary and simple critiques on a range of topics. Fiction does not use the same words as newspapers, so looking up more often at this stage is normal. If you look things up so often that you lose the story, going back to children’s stories for a while is fine.
Around N1
Rashōmon is a short story of about 5,700 characters, but it is set in Heian-period Kyoto and packed with old words and Sino-Japanese vocabulary. Short as it is, each page is dense. Botchan reads lightly but is a full novel of about 88,000 characters, and its narrator talks like the brash Tokyo native he is. Kokoro is about 160,000 characters, and its last part is one character’s long letter, following his thoughts in close detail.
Passing N1 does not mean these will read smoothly. The test uses modern texts, and modern literature is full of words the test never asks about. Every level in this post means “a reasonable place to start,” not “readable without a dictionary.”
A guide is only a guide
Any table that matches levels to books is someone’s judgement, and this one is mine. The surest test, I think, is to read one page. If you can follow the story and you aren’t reaching for the dictionary every line, the book suits you now.
The counting itself works for any other book. The Aozora Bunko card page tells you the spelling of an edition, and the text tells you its length. How to find works on the site is in What Is Aozora Bunko?.
Checking difficulty in Niho
I make Niho, a free reader for iPhone and iPad with the Aozora Bunko catalogue of more than 17,000 works.
Each work’s detail screen shows its spelling (such as 新字新仮名) and its length in characters, so you know how long it is before you download it. Editions in old kana are flagged before download. While reading, select a word and tap Look up, and the entry shows the word’s JLPT level along with its meaning. These levels come from Jonathan Waller’s JLPT word lists, which, as explained above, are not official JLPT lists. Even so, checking the levels of the words you look up on the first page gives you a fair idea of how far above you a book sits.
Furigana is shown only where the original edition has it, and you can turn it off. Text is horizontal only, with no vertical layout. Getting Started with Niho walks through the first book.
