Famous works

Stories and poems from the classics.

Japanese folk tales

日本の昔話

21 works

The tales every Japanese child knows: Momotaro born out of a peach, Urashima Taro coming back from the dragon palace to find a century gone, the old man who made dead trees bloom. Twenty-one of them, in the versions Kusuyama Masao retold in the 1920s and 30s, each one split into short chapters.

Children's songs

童謡・唱歌

16 works

The songs Japanese children sing at school and at home — the Meiji-era 唱歌 taught from Ministry of Education readers, and the 童謡 written in the 1920s. Sixteen of them, a few lines each, which makes them the shortest real Japanese text here and a reasonable first thing to read.

Niimi Nankichi

新美南吉

13 works

Niimi Nankichi wrote for children and died at twenty-nine, and his stories have been in Japanese school readers ever since. Thirteen of them — quiet, often sad, and plainly written: a boy who loses a one-sen coin, a bird that comes back after a year to a tree that is no longer there.

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke

芥川竜之介

2 works

Akutagawa wrote the short stories modern Japanese prose is still measured against, and Japan's main literary prize carries his name. Two of them here, in chapters: 蜘蛛の糸, where a sinner in hell is let down a spider's thread, and 魔術.

Ogawa Mimei

小川未明

5 works

Called the Hans Christian Andersen of Japan, Ogawa Mimei wrote fairy tales with a melancholy edge that rarely resolve the way a children's story is supposed to. Five of them, in chapters.