Read Japanese (iOS / iPadOS / macOS)
Thank you for using Read Japanese. Please send questions, bug reports and requests to r.muranaka.work@gmail.com. A reply may take a few days.
For a bug report, these details make the cause much easier to find.
No — the works are in the original Japanese, and there is no English translation of them. That is what the app is for: reading what the author wrote, set the way a printed Japanese book is set.
What the app does give you, while you read the original, is help with the words: furigana above the base characters, a press-and-hold look-up that goes to the built-in dictionary, Japanese Wikipedia, the web or the on-device AI, and an English translation of the selected word. The AI explains a word for the passage it appears in, and answers in the app’s language.
The text of a work is fetched over the network the first time you open it. It cannot be fetched where there is no signal, so please open it once while online. After that it reads offline.
For works from 青空文庫 (Aozora Bunko), the furigana is shown exactly as it is in the Aozora Bunko data. It follows the source edition, so it can differ from the reading in common use today. Works from the National Diet Library Digital Collections were produced by optical character recognition, so recognition errors may remain.
Tap the middle of the text in the reader and a menu appears. You can change the typeface, type size, line spacing, margins, the background colour, and whether furigana is shown.
Press and hold a word in the text to look it up, and it is kept automatically in the Words tab. The same word is kept as one entry, and the work and passage where you looked it up build up under it. You can turn this off in Settings.
Handoff is supported. If a device signed in to the same Apple Account is nearby, you can pick up the page you were on.
iCloud sync is supported too. Turn on “Sync with iCloud” in Settings > Sync and your library, reading position, bookmarks, highlights and notes, saved words and reading log carry between devices on the same Apple Account. They are stored in your own iCloud private database, and the developer cannot read them.
Sync needs the device to be signed in to iCloud. If it is not, or if iCloud cannot start syncing for some other reason, Settings > Sync shows the reason under “Where data is stored”.
iCloud sync is a Pro feature. For a period after you start using the app it works without a subscription (Settings shows the days remaining). After that period the app stops syncing from the next time you open it, but nothing already saved is lost.
The storage location is decided when the app launches, so please reopen the app after turning sync on or off. Downloaded text is stored per device and is not synced.
iOS decides when widgets refresh. Please check that Settings > General > Background App Refresh is on.
To match what you read aloud against the text and follow where you are. Audio is processed on the device only; nothing is stored or transmitted.
Most of the works come from the public data of 青空文庫 (Aozora Bunko), and works newly published there are taken in with app updates. Alongside those we carry works we produced ourselves from materials marked with the Public Domain Mark (PDM) in the National Diet Library Digital Collections — mostly translations.
No. Reading all 17,372 works, the vertical typesetting, downloading and reading offline are free. The paid plan is for people who want more of the word log and of the tools that support reading; subscribing is optional.
Monthly 200 yen, yearly 1,600 yen, lifetime 4,000 yen (all including tax; your local price is shown before you buy). Monthly and yearly renew automatically and include a 3-day free trial. When the trial ends, billing starts automatically unless you cancel. The lifetime purchase does not renew: one payment and it keeps working.
You can cancel in the Settings app > your name > Subscriptions. If you do not cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends, the next period is charged. After cancelling you can keep using Pro until the end of the period you have already paid for. If you cancel during the free trial, you are not charged.
Yes, as long as you are signed in with the same Apple Account. Please try “Restore Purchases” on the purchase screen in the app.
Refunds for App Store purchases are handled by Apple. Please apply at reportaproblem.apple.com. The developer cannot issue a refund directly.
The app carries works whose copyright term has expired in Japan, from two sources: 青空文庫 (Aozora Bunko) (17,344 works) and the National Diet Library Digital Collections (28 works). Where a work came from, its source edition, and the people who input and proofread it are shown on the work detail screen. See the privacy policy for the rights in each source.