Modern Japanese: A Basic Reader

This reader is a good resource for improving your Japanese. It has 60 lessons, each consisting of a text in Japanese, with an accompanying vocabulary list, plus a list of new kanji and readings introduced in that lesson. The vocabulary lists are in volume I, and the texts and kanji lists are in volume II, so you can have volume I open to a lesson's vocabulary list while reading the text in volume II. (If you're buying this used, make sure it includes both volumes.) To use this reader, you should be reasonably comfortable with basic Japanese grammar, since there is very little explanation of grammar provided; a grammar guide like A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar can be handy to have on hand. You also need to know some basic vocabulary, but all except the simplest words are defined when they are first used, and no prior knowledge of kanji is assumed. You will need to know hiragana (there is a brief introductory lesson on this, but it's probably easier to learn it elsewhere). The first few lessons don't use katakana, so you could learn that in parallel if you want. If you have some foundation in Japanese, you can use this reader to build up your reading ability and vocabulary. It's also possible to use this as your main learning course for kanji: you can look up and learn the kanji as they are introduced in each lesson. The book covers a total of 1333 kanji. The earlier lessons are mostly written by the authors of the reader, but many of them deal with real topics related to Japan and the Japanese language. The later lessons are excerpts from real Japanese writing by "leading scholars and men of letters"; these include literature, literary criticism, and academic works. Some of the material is rather dry, but on the whole I've found it reasonably interesting, certainly more so than the stuff in most language textbooks. This reader is from the mid-1960s, and it shows its age a bit in terms of the topics covered and the writing styles. Most of the writing is from the mid 20th century and uses the modern postwar kanji and kana orthography, but a few of the later lessons have material that dates back to the early 20th century and uses the old prewar writing system. Unless you wish to sound like an elderly Japanese academic, some caution would probably be warranted in adopting the writing styles illustrated in this book. The subject matter is of course also outdated when it talks about current conditions in Japan, but it can still be interesting. All in all, I think this is a pretty good Japanese reader, although something more up do date and illustrating a greater variety of modern writing styles would be ideal.

I thought this book was a course in Japanese and contained a grammar and exercises. It does not it is just a reader. As readers go it looks good and I am sure it is excellent. It is published by the Harvard Press so you can't go wrong.