At N2 you can read Japanese novels, and the only question is which ones are worth the next three months. These ten are: four modern novels and six classics every Japanese reader knows, with vocabulary at N2 and sentences short enough to enjoy.
We measured each book’s vocabulary and sentence length, and kept the ones that read at N2 against the JLPT word lists. The four modern novels open in MnemoRead from your own copy, and the six classics are free to read right now. How we measured is at the end.
- コンビニ人間 · Convenience Store Woman
- コーヒーが冷めないうちに · Before the Coffee Gets Cold
- キッチン · Kitchen
- 1Q84 BOOK1 · 1Q84, Book 1
- おれは二十面相だ · I Am the Fiend with Twenty Faces
- 三四郎 · Sanshiro
- こころ · Kokoro
- 風の又三郎 · Matasaburo of the Wind
- 銀河鉄道の夜 · Night on the Galactic Railroad
- 二十四の瞳 · Twenty-Four Eyes
The 10 Best Japanese Books for JLPT N2
Four modern novels
These are sold everywhere, and each opens in MnemoRead from your own copy. Each one’s page says where to find it.
1. コンビニ人間 (Convenience Store Woman, 2016)
村田沙耶香
Keiko has worked eighteen years at the same convenience store and is happy there, which everyone around her finds unbearable. A short, sharp novel that won the Akutagawa Prize and has been translated around the world.
Set almost entirely inside one shop, so the vocabulary is the vocabulary of the shop and repeats on every page, and much of it is dialogue. It is short enough to finish in two or three weeks, which makes it a wonderful start.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 6,053
- Sentence length
- 16.1 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 32 words
- Length
- Short
- 37,126 words · < 3 hours
- Dialogue
- 40%
- Kanji among the characters
- 27%
2. コーヒーが冷めないうちに (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, 2015)
川口俊和
In a small basement café in Tokyo one seat lets you travel in time, under rules: you cannot leave the seat, nothing you do will change the present, and you must be back before the coffee gets cold. Four people try it.
Short sentences and a plot that explains its own rules more than once, which is a gift to a learner. Most of it is narration rather than dialogue, and it comes as four linked stories, so it reads well one at a time.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 7,662
- Sentence length
- 12.9 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 26 words
- Length
- Novella
- 68,928 words · ~3-8 hours
- Dialogue
- 15%
- Kanji among the characters
- 29%
3. キッチン (Kitchen, 1988)
吉本ばなな
Mikage, alone after her grandmother dies, is taken in by a young man and his mother, who used to be his father, and finds her footing again in their kitchen. The novella that made Yoshimoto famous at twenty-four, with the story Moonlight Shadow.
Short sentences and a plain, modern style that has made it a favourite first novel for learners. The vocabulary is that of feelings, food and the inside of an apartment. Take it as your second or third book, when you want literature that is still easy.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 7,704
- Sentence length
- 13.0 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 26 words
- Length
- Novella
- 44,882 words · ~3-8 hours
- Dialogue
- 25%
- Kanji among the characters
- 24%
4. 1Q84 BOOK1 (1Q84, Book 1, 2009)
村上春樹
Aomame climbs down an emergency stairway off a Tokyo expressway and into a year that is not quite 1984, while Tengo, a maths teacher, rewrites a strange girl’s novel. The first of three volumes of Murakami’s longest book.
Murakami’s Japanese is famously plain: sentences of moderate length, plenty of dialogue, and a vocabulary that keeps coming back across a very long book. It is the book for a reader who wants a world to live in for a season, and the two later volumes are written the same way.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 9,596
- Sentence length
- 15.5 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 28 words
- Length
- Novel
- 192,972 words · 8+ hours
- Dialogue
- 37%
- Kanji among the characters
- 27%
Six classics, free to read now
Every Japanese learner ends up at Soseki and Miyazawa Kenji. These six are free to read in MnemoRead with a tap-to-translate dictionary.
5. おれは二十面相だ (I Am the Fiend with Twenty Faces, 1960)
江戸川乱歩
A student walks into the Egyptian room of an antiquities institute and vanishes, and soon an invisible thief is stealing treasures across Tokyo. Detective Akechi Kogoro, his young assistant Kobayashi and the Boy Detectives Club set out to unmask the master of disguise, Twenty Faces.
Ranpo wrote his Boy Detectives books for schoolchildren, in plain Japanese with few kanji and short chapters that each end on a cliffhanger. It is a gentle way into the classics, and if you enjoy it, a whole shelf of Twenty Faces adventures is waiting in our library.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 7,609
- Sentence length
- 15.2 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 28 words
- Length
- Short
- 27,002 words · < 3 hours
- Dialogue
- 39%
- Kanji among the characters
- 19%
6. 三四郎 (Sanshiro, 1908)
夏目漱石
Sanshiro comes up from Kyushu to study at Tokyo Imperial University and discovers the city, a circle of clever friends and a young woman, Mineko, whom he never quite understands. The lightest of Soseki’s novels.
Soseki’s most everyday subject, a student’s first year in the big city, told in short sentences. The kanji run thicker than in a modern novel, since Soseki wrote before the post-war reforms, but the words behind them are ordinary. Read it before Kokoro; together they are the classic introduction to modern Japanese literature.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 10,663
- Sentence length
- 13.6 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 25 words
- Length
- Novella
- 94,164 words · ~3-8 hours
- Dialogue
- 26%
- Kanji among the characters
- 29%
7. こころ (Kokoro, 1914)
夏目漱石
A student befriends an older man he calls Sensei, who lives withdrawn from the world with a secret, and the last part of the book is Sensei’s long letter explaining it. One of the most read novels in Japan.
Soseki tells this story with a close, repeated vocabulary of friendship, loneliness and guilt, so the words you learn in the first part carry you through the rest. The long letter that ends the book is written to a young man, to be understood, and it is the part readers remember.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 8,792
- Sentence length
- 18.7 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 33 words
- Length
- Novella
- 98,914 words · ~3-8 hours
- Dialogue
- 36%
- Kanji among the characters
- 30%
8. 風の又三郎 (Matasaburo of the Wind, 1934)
宮沢賢治
A strange boy arrives at a mountain village school on the first day of September, when the wind blows, and the children decide he is the wind spirit Matasaburo. A few days later he is gone.
Short enough to read in a few evenings, in the plain, concrete Japanese of a village school: the classroom, the river, the fields, the wind. The children speak the dialect of Iwate, which looks strange at first and soon becomes familiar, since it repeats. A lovely first Miyazawa.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 10,233
- Sentence length
- 15.7 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 33 words
- Length
- Short
- 16,528 words · < 3 hours
- Dialogue
- 23%
- Kanji among the characters
- 20%
9. 銀河鉄道の夜 (Night on the Galactic Railroad, 1934)
宮沢賢治
Giovanni, a poor boy teased at school, falls asleep on a hill on the night of the star festival and wakes on a train crossing the Milky Way with his friend Campanella. Miyazawa’s unfinished masterpiece, and one of the most loved books in Japan.
Miyazawa wrote for children, so the kanji are few, but his sentences stretch out like the Milky Way itself, and that is the challenge here. The words are those of the sky, the train and its stations, and they return chapter after chapter. Read Matasaburo first, then this; it is short.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 10,303
- Sentence length
- 19.8 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 41 words
- Length
- Short
- 22,516 words · < 3 hours
- Dialogue
- 33%
- Kanji among the characters
- 17%
10. 二十四の瞳 (Twenty-Four Eyes, 1952)
壺井栄
A young teacher takes up her first post at a village school on an island in the Inland Sea in 1928, with twelve first-year pupils, and the book follows them through the next twenty years, the war included. Filmed twice, and known to every Japanese reader.
The sentences are moderate and much of the talk is children’s, but the book covers twenty years of village life, school and war, and the vocabulary grows with it. It is the one most worth finishing: close it, and you have read a Japanese novel about Japan, the way Japanese readers have for generations.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 12,277
- Sentence length
- 15.4 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 30 words
- Length
- Novella
- 60,896 words · ~3-8 hours
- Dialogue
- 27%
- Kanji among the characters
- 20%
More Japanese books at N2
Finished the ten? Ranpo’s other Boy Detectives books, 電人Ｍ and 超人ニコラ among them, are free in our library, as are Unno Juza’s science-fiction serials and Dazai’s 正義と微笑. Among modern novels, Aoyama’s Hot Chocolate on Thursday is a lovely next step after Kitchen. The intermediate Japanese books page has many more.
Not quite ready for N2?
The N3 list has two warm novels to start with, two short modern classics and four free short stories to read tonight.
See the N3 listBeyond N2
The advanced Japanese books page goes further, from Akutagawa to Sword Art Online.
See the advanced booksTips for Reading at N2 Level
1. Let the names go: The hardest kanji in a Japanese novel are the names. You do not need to read them, only to recognise them the second time. Our analysis counts them as known, and so can you.
2. Expect old kanji in the classics: Soseki and Miyazawa wrote before the post-war reforms, and older editions keep some older forms. The words behind them are the same words; a tap shows the reading.
3. Read a little every day: Twenty minutes daily beats two hours on Sunday. A novel like Sanshiro takes an N2 reader two or three months at that pace, and the second half goes faster than the first, because every author repeats their vocabulary.
4. Make flashcards from the book itself: In MnemoRead a tap translates a word in its sentence and saves it as a flashcard, so the words you review are the ones the author will use again a few pages later.
How we measured these books
The analysis behind every entry is the one that rates each book on our Japanese difficulty pages. It reduces each word of the full text to its dictionary form, counts how many of the most common Japanese words you would need to know to understand 95% of the running text, and measures the sentences, both the typical one and the long one in ten. Names count as known. Vocabulary and sentence length give a score out of 100, and the score places the book at the beginner, intermediate or advanced level of our library. Those levels are relative to the library, not to a course.
The JLPT reading is separate. No JLPT level's vocabulary covers 95% of a real book, so a book gets the easiest level whose words cover nearly everything the whole JLPT list covers; the rest of the text is names, and words beyond any test. The label does not promise that you know every word; it says that the words learnt to pass N2 carry you through the rest of the sentence, and the words-for-95% figure says how far past the test a book reaches.
The lists keep novels and stories, with a mix of lengths and genres so that there is a short book and a long one for every taste, and put them in the order we suggest reading them.
Conclusion
Four modern novels that fit in a month each, and six classics that every Japanese reader knows, free to read right now. Finish them and N1 is a matter of time, not of books.
Remember: the best book is the one you will finish. Start with whichever one attracts you most and let the story carry you. Happy reading!