What Is Aozora Bunko? Copyright Rules and How Japanese Learners Can Use It

Aozora Bunko (青空文庫, “the open-air library”) is a free online library of Japanese literature. It began in 1997, when four people, among them the writer Tomita Michio (富田倫生), called for volunteers to put out-of-copyright books online. When I checked its front page in October 2026, it listed 17,840 works: 17,352 whose copyright has ended and 488 that are still under copyright and published with the holder’s permission.

Most learners of Japanese hear the name early, usually as “the place with free Natsume Sōseki.” Fewer know how it decides what to publish, or how to get from its home page, which is entirely in Japanese, to a book they can read. This post covers both.

Who makes it

Everything on Aozora Bunko is typed or scanned by volunteers from a printed edition, called the source text (底本, teihon). One volunteer inputs the text and a different volunteer proofreads it against the same printed book. The site calls its volunteers 耕作員 (kōsakuin), literally “cultivators.” Tomita died in 2013, and a fund called 本の未来基金 (the Future of Books Fund) was set up afterwards to support the library. The front page links to it for anyone who wants to donate.

Because the work is done by hand, the library grows slowly, and a book appears only when someone chooses to type it. Works being typed or waiting for proofreading are listed on the author’s page as “作業中” (in progress) and cannot be read yet. Only those under “公開中” (published) can.

How copyright decides what is there

Aozora Bunko follows Japanese copyright law. In Japan the term for most works is the author’s life plus 70 years. Until 30 December 2018 it was life plus 50, and the change was not retroactive. Aozora Bunko’s own note on the extension puts it plainly: the work of an author who died in 1968 will enter the public domain on 1 January 2039. Authors who died in 1967 or earlier had already passed the old 50-year mark, so their works stay free.

For a learner, this explains the shape of the collection. Writers such as Natsume Sōseki (died 1916), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1927), Miyazawa Kenji (1933) and Dazai Osamu (1948) are there in large numbers. Writers who died in 1968 or later, such as Mishima Yukio (1970) and Kawabata Yasunari (1972), are still under copyright in Japan, and their works will not enter the public domain there before 2039 at the earliest.

Two details are easy to miss. First, a translation has its own copyright, held by the translator. Aozora Bunko’s rules for using its files say that if the translator’s rights are still in force, the work counts as protected, even when the original author’s rights have expired. Second, the 488 works still under copyright may be read and copied for private use, but anything beyond that needs the holder’s permission, unless the book’s page states a licence such as Creative Commons.

For works whose copyright has ended, the rules are generous. You may copy and redistribute the files freely, whether or not you charge for them, and you don’t need to ask Aozora Bunko. The library only asks that you keep the bibliographic information at the end of each file, such as the source text and the names of the volunteers.

One more point if you live outside Japan. Aozora Bunko decides what to publish by Japanese law. What you may copy or share where you live is governed by your own country’s law, which may count the years differently.

Finding a book on the site

The site has no English interface, but you only need a few words.

• 作家別 (by author) and 作品別 (by title) indexes are ordered by the Japanese syllabary, あ, か, さ and so on. If you know an author’s name, the author index is usually the quickest route.
• Each author has a page listing 公開中の作品, the works you can read.
• Each work has a 図書カード (catalogue card). This is the page you want.

On the catalogue card, look for 文字遣い種別, the spelling type. 新字新仮名 means modern characters and modern kana spelling, which is what your dictionary and textbook use. 旧字旧仮名 means old characters and old kana spelling, where いう is written いふ, for example. The same work often exists in more than one version, and as a learner I would always choose 新字新仮名.

At the bottom of the card is the download table. The text file (テキストファイル, in a zip) is plain text in the Shift_JIS encoding, with readings marked inline in 《》 and editorial notes in ［＃…］. Apps that expect UTF-8 show it as garbled characters, and even when it opens correctly, the notes get in the way of reading. The XHTML file opens in any browser, shows readings as proper furigana, and works with browser pop-up dictionaries. For reading on the site, I think the XHTML file is the better choice.

Expect the text to be horizontal in the browser, even though the printed books were vertical, and expect old works to use words and kanji that a textbook never taught. Choosing short, easy works first helps a lot. I listed thirty of them, roughly in order of difficulty, in 30 Easy Japanese Classics on Aozora Bunko for Learners. If you are still reading graded readers, How to Start Extensive Reading in Japanese explains when the move to real books makes sense.

Reading Aozora Bunko in Niho

I make Niho, a free reader for iPhone and iPad that holds the Aozora Bunko catalogue of more than 17,000 works. You can search by title or author in kanji, kana or romaji, without a connection. When you pick a book, Niho downloads the text directly from aozora.gr.jp and turns the Aozora file format into a readable page: it removes the editorial notes, shows the readings as furigana where the source text has them, and builds chapters from the headings.

The genre shelves show only 新字新仮名 versions. Versions in old kana spelling still appear in search, and before you download one, Niho warns you that the dictionary may not find some of its words. To look something up, select the text roughly and tap Look up. Niho finds the longest dictionary word from the start of your selection and traces conjugated forms back to the dictionary form. Words you look up are saved with their sentences and come back later in short quizzes.

The limits are the same as on the site in one way: Niho shows text horizontally only. It has no ads, no purchases and no account. Getting Started with Niho walks through the first book. For English books, I wrote a similar guide in What Is Project Gutenberg?