Advanced · JLPT N1
JLPT N1 reading practice: Japanese literature with furigana
N1 texts are literature for adult readers: dense description, classical allusions, formal narration and vocabulary well beyond any word list. These are the stories that reward slow reading.
Each page still gives you furigana, a sentence-by-sentence translation and notes, but the notes focus on literary and archaic language rather than everyday grammar. If a story here is too hard today, the same author's children's stories on the N2 and N3 shelves are a good way in.
Original stories at N1
The Scarlet Surcoat
At the Roots of the Cherry Trees
A Thread of Spider Silk
Tangerines Thrown at Dusk
The Boy from the Peach
The Making of a Master
Moonset on the Mountain Road
Over the Frozen Snow
What the Letters Whisper
形 — The Scarlet Surcoat
形 (Katachi, literally 'Form' or 'Outward Appearance') is a very short historical tale by Kikuchi Kan, set when rival lords divided the Kinai region among themselves. Its hero is Nakamura Shinbē, a spearman so famous that enemy soldiers recognise him at once by…
桜の樹の下には — At the Roots of the Cherry Trees
This is a very short prose piece, closer to a prose poem than a story. A man speaks to someone he calls おまえ, who never answers, and makes a startling claim about the cherry trees in bloom. The famous opening line, 桜の樹の下には屍体が埋まっている！, is widely known in Japan…
蜘蛛の糸 — A Thread of Spider Silk
"A Thread of Spider Silk" (蜘蛛の糸) is a short Buddhist fable by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, written in 1918 for the children's magazine Akai Tori. One morning the Buddha strolls beside the lotus pond of Paradise and looks down through the clear water to the bottom of…
蜜柑 — Tangerines Thrown at Dusk
"Mikan" is a very short first-person sketch by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, set on a single train journey. On a cloudy winter evening, a tired and gloomy narrator sits in a second-class carriage leaving Yokosuka. A shabby country girl carrying a third-class ticket…
桃太郎 — The Boy from the Peach
Akutagawa's 桃太郎 is a satirical retelling of the folk tale every Japanese child knows: a boy born from a peach sets out with a dog, a monkey and a pheasant to conquer the island of the oni. Akutagawa wraps it in a mythic frame, with a giant peach tree that…
名人伝 — The Making of a Master
名人伝 is a short fable set in ancient China, told in Japanese prose that carries the rhythm of classical Chinese. Kishō, a man of Kantan, resolves to become the greatest archer in the world, and the story follows him through years of strange training under two…
山月記 — Moonset on the Mountain Road
Sangetsuki is a short tale set in Tang-dynasty China, retold by Nakajima Atsushi from an older Chinese story about a man who becomes a tiger. Ri Chō, a gifted and proud scholar, abandons his official career to win fame as a poet, fails, and disappears. A year…
雪渡り — Over the Frozen Snow
"Over the Frozen Snow" (雪渡り) is a gentle winter fairy tale by Miyazawa Kenji. On a morning when the snow has frozen hard enough to walk on, two village children, Shirō and his little sister Kanko, cross fields they normally cannot reach. At the edge of the…
文字禍 — What the Letters Whisper
Set in Nineveh, capital of ancient Assyria, this short story begins with a rumour: strange voices are heard whispering in the royal library at night. King Ashur-bani-apal orders an elderly scholar to investigate whether spirits dwell in written characters, and…