Aozora Bunko (青空文庫, aozora.gr.jp) is a volunteer library of Japanese books whose copyright has run out: Akutagawa, Dazai, Miyazawa Kenji, Natsume Sōseki and thousands more, free to read. The catch for a learner is that the texts come as plain prose, often in old spellings, and a Sōseki novel runs to hundreds of thousands of characters. This page picks five short classics, orders them by length, shows the first sentence of each with furigana, says what makes each one hard, and gives a routine for reading them on a phone. All five are in the Aozora Bunko library of YoMoo, a Japanese reading app with furigana, where every Aozora text is free with no article limit.
In short
- Start with 蜘蛛の糸: 2,851 characters, about 19 minutes at a learner’s pace, one scene.
- Read with furigana only on the words above your level, tap for meanings instead of leaving the page, and save five words a story.
- Expect old spellings (云う for 言う, ゐ for い); the table below covers the six you will meet most.
Start here: five short classics, shortest first
Length, not JLPT level, sets the order. Nobody has levelled whole works, and a story from 1915 uses words that are on no JLPT list, so each card gives the length in characters, an estimated reading time at 150 characters a minute (a steady pace for a learner reading with furigana and tapping a few words a paragraph), the opening sentence with furigana, and one honest line on what makes it hard. The JLPT tags are the ones YoMoo’s own word lists give to the key words in each title.
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蜘蛛の糸Kumo no Ito: The Spider’s Thread
ある日の事でございます。
It happened one day.
What makes it hard: The narrator speaks in the polite でございます form from the first line to the last, which learners rarely meet in fiction. 糸 is N4 in YoMoo’s lists; 蜘蛛 is on no JLPT list, and the Buddhist setting (極楽, paradise; 地獄, hell) brings words no textbook teaches. One scene in three short parts: the easiest start.
Open it in YoMoo -
注文の多い料理店Chūmon no Ōi Ryōriten: The Restaurant of Many Orders
二人の若い紳士が、すっかりイギリスの兵隊のかたちをして、ぴかぴかする鉄砲をかついで、白熊のような犬を二疋つれて、だいぶ山奥の、木の葉のかさかさしたとこを、こんなことを云いながら、あるいておりました。
Two young gentlemen, got up just like British soldiers, with shiny guns on their shoulders and two dogs like polar bears in tow, were walking deep in the mountains where the leaves rustled, saying this:
What makes it hard: 料理 and 店 in the title are both N5, but the first sentence runs on for several lines before it reaches its verb. Expect sound words (ぴかぴか, かさかさ), 云う for 言う and the counter 疋 for the dogs. The plot is a comedy with signs on a row of doors, so you can predict the next line even when a sentence loses you.
Open it in YoMoo -
羅生門Rashōmon: Rashōmon
ある日の暮方の事である。
It happened one day at dusk.
What makes it hard: Plain である narration in short sentences, set in the ruined Heian capital, so 下人 (the servant, on no JLPT list), 朱雀大路 and 市女笠 are period words; 雨 (N5) falls through the whole opening. YoMoo lists two editions: choose the one that starts ある日の暮方の事である, which is in modern kana.
Open it in YoMoo -
走れメロスHashire Merosu: Run, Melos!
メロスは激怒した。
Melos was furious.
What makes it hard: 走る is N5 and 友 and 王 are N3, so the title and its themes read easily; the text runs on long, emotional sentences with ～ぬ for ～ない (わからぬ, ならぬ) and names in katakana (メロス, セリヌンティウス). The longest of the four short stories here, and the most quoted in Japanese schools.
Open it in YoMoo -
銀河鉄道の夜Ginga Tetsudō no Yoru: Night on the Galactic Railroad
午后の授業「ではみなさんは、そういうふうに川だと云われたり、乳の流れたあとだと云われたりしていたこのぼんやりと白いものがほんとうは何かご承知ですか。」
Afternoon class. “So, everyone: this hazy white thing, which some called a river and some the trace of spilt milk, do you know what it really is?”
What makes it hard: 鉄道 is N3; 銀河 is on no list. At 38,301 characters it is longer than the other four together, with old forms (午后 for 午後, 云う), words Miyazawa made up, and star vocabulary (天の川 you can guess from its parts). Read it a chapter at a time; the first chapter is a school lesson about the Milky Way.
Open it in YoMoo
When you are ready for a full novel: 吾輩は猫である (I Am a Cat, Natsume Sōseki, 1905) is in the same library at 318,438 characters, about 35 hours of reading. 猫 and 名前 are N5; 吾輩, the pompous “I” of the narrator cat, is on no JLPT list and in no modern conversation. The video below reads its first line.
How to read a classic with furigana
- Furigana only on the levels you need. In YoMoo, furigana can sit on every kanji or only on the words above a JLPT level you choose. Set it one level above where you are: readings on the words you do not know, none on the words you do, so the kanji you already know keep doing their work.
- Tap, don’t look up. Tapping a word in the reader shows the meaning in place, and you stay inside the sentence. Tap only what blocks the meaning and skip the rest. A sentence with four unknown nouns is still readable if you know the verb.
- Save five words a story. Save the words you tapped twice. Five a story is enough, and they come back for review as flashcards. Period words such as 下人 are fine to save: they return in the next classic.
- Listen with text-to-speech. YoMoo reads any text aloud with a synthetic voice. Play a paragraph after you have read it, then once more while you read along. It is a machine voice, not a narrator, but it keeps the rhythm, and it makes old spellings audible: 云う sounds exactly like 言う.
- Read the opening three times. First with furigana, for the gist. Second tapping the words that stopped you. Third aloud, or along with the audio. The opening of a classic carries its hardest words (the setting, the names, the narrator’s voice), so three passes over the first 300 characters make the rest of the story faster.
There is no link that opens one work directly. In the app or in the web reader, open the Library, choose Aozora Bunko and search for the title. The web reader works in any browser; the phone apps add saved-word review and text-to-speech.
Hear one line from a classic
The opening of 吾輩は猫である, read with furigana in 37 seconds.
More on the My Senpai YouTube channel.
Old spellings you will meet
Most of the five texts above are in modern kana, but every one of them keeps some pre-war habits, and a work printed in historical kana (the second 羅生門 edition in YoMoo, for example) uses all of these. Furigana shows the modern reading, so you only need to recognise the shapes.
| In the old text | Modern form | What is going on |
|---|---|---|
| 云う | 言う | An older kanji for the same word, same reading. All five works use it. |
| 居る, ゐる | いる | 居る is kanji for いる (to be); ゐ is the old kana wi, read い. ゑ is we, read え. |
| ぢ, づ | じ, ず | Old spelling in many words: はぢ = はじ (恥), みづ = みず (水). Modern Japanese keeps ぢ and づ only in a few words such as つづく. |
| は, ひ, ふ, へ, ほ inside a word | わ, い, う, え, お | いふ = いう, おもふ = おもう, まへ = まえ (前), かは = かわ (川). Only at the start of a word do they keep their own sound. |
| さう, でせう, けふ | そう, でしょう, きょう | Old vowel pairs read as long vowels: さうだ = そうだ, でせう = でしょう, けふ = きょう (今日). |
| 事, 此の, 其の, 迄 | こと, この, その, まで | Kanji for words that modern text writes in kana. Furigana solves these; you only have to recognise them. |
For the readings themselves, our guide to what furigana is and when to turn it off explains how to stop depending on them, and why one kanji has many readings covers the 云/言 kind of surprise. If 5,000 characters still feels long, the JLPT N4 reading practice has shorter passages with questions.
Frequently asked questions
What is Aozora Bunko?
Aozora Bunko (青空文庫, “blue sky library”, at aozora.gr.jp) is a volunteer-run digital library of Japanese literature, started in 1997. Volunteers type and proofread books whose copyright has run out, plus some works their authors have released, and publish them free as text and HTML files: thousands of novels, stories, essays and children’s books from the Meiji era onward.
Is Aozora Bunko free to read?
Yes. Every text on aozora.gr.jp is free to read and download. In YoMoo the Aozora Bunko library, 496 works, is always free as well: Aozora texts do not count against the article limit on the phone apps, and no account is needed.
Is it legal to read Aozora Bunko books in an app?
Yes. The books are in the public domain in Japan. Japanese copyright protection ends 70 years after the author’s death (it was 50 years before December 2018, and works that had already expired stayed free). Natsume Sōseki died in 1916, Akutagawa in 1927, Miyazawa Kenji in 1933 and Dazai in 1948, so their work belongs to everyone, and quoting or reprinting it is allowed.
Which Aozora Bunko story should a learner read first?
蜘蛛の糸 (The Spider’s Thread) by Akutagawa: 2,851 characters, one scene, polite narration and a plot you can follow from the title. Then 注文の多い料理店, a comedy whose signs on doors let you guess the next line. 羅生門 and 走れメロス come next; leave 銀河鉄道の夜 until a story of 10,000 characters feels normal.
Where else can I read Aozora Bunko with furigana?
On aozora.gr.jp the texts are plain, with readings only where the original edition printed them. For furigana on every kanji, paste the text into the My Senpai furigana reader in your browser (my-senpai.com/analyzer/yomoo/), open the Aozora Bunko shelf in the YoMoo app, or use an e-reader app that imports Aozora text files and adds readings.
Last reviewed November 6, 2026. Lengths are character counts of the texts as stored in YoMoo’s Aozora Bunko library (spaces and line breaks removed), counted by My Senpai on November 6, 2026; reading times assume 150 characters a minute. JLPT tags come from YoMoo’s word lists. Opening sentences are quoted from the public-domain texts; furigana added by My Senpai. Aozora Bunko (aozora.gr.jp) is a volunteer project not connected with My Senpai.