# Shinobi Japanese

> Free graded Japanese stories for learners, calibrated to JLPT levels (Pre-N5 through N2). Hand-picked, illustrated, with translations in 9 languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Indonesian, Filipino). No login, no paywall.

Shinobi Japanese is a Japanese language learning platform centered on graded reading. The free web library at https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories is a curated selection from the Shinobi mobile app's much larger story library. Every story is tagged with a JLPT (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test) level and comes with full multilingual translations.

What changes between levels is story length, grammar complexity, and narrative depth — not kanji density. The Shinobi catalog uses kanji at every level where the word is normally written in kanji; the mobile app provides tap-to-translate, while the web version pairs each Japanese page with full translations.

The five JLPT-aligned reading levels:
- Pre-N5 (Starter): 100–250 characters, 5 pages, basic sentence patterns, survival vocabulary
- JLPT N5 (Beginner): 250–400 characters, 5 pages, N5 grammar, daily-life situations
- JLPT N4 (Lower-intermediate): 600–800 characters, 7–10 pages, N4 grammar, slight narrative twists
- JLPT N3 (Intermediate): 800–1,000 characters, 10–15 pages, N3 grammar, complex narratives
- JLPT N2 (Upper-intermediate): 1,000–1,500 characters, 15–20 pages, N2 grammar, nuance and implied meaning

## Core pages

- [Japanese Stories — full library](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories): Main entry point. Hand-picked free Japanese stories filterable by JLPT level and topic.
- [Pre-N5 Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/pre-n5): For absolute beginners — short stories with survival vocabulary and basic sentence patterns.
- [JLPT N5 Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/jlpt-n5): Beginner Japanese stories using N5 grammar and daily-life situations.
- [JLPT N4 Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/jlpt-n4): Lower-intermediate Japanese stories with te-form, casual speech, and longer narratives.
- [JLPT N3 Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/jlpt-n3): Intermediate Japanese stories with basic keigo and idiomatic grammar.
- [JLPT N2 Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/jlpt-n2): Upper-intermediate Japanese stories with full keigo and abstract topics.

## Topic pages

- [Daily Life in Japan](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/daily-life)
- [Japanese Food Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/food)
- [Japan Travel Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/travel)
- [Traditional Japanese Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/traditional)
- [Japanese School Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/school)
- [Japanese Work & Business Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/work)
- [Japanese Love & Romance Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/romance)
- [Japanese Fantasy Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/fantasy)
- [Japanese Animal Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/animals)
- [Japanese Adventure Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/adventure)
- [Japanese Sci-Fi Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/sci-fi)
- [Japanese Sports Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/sport)
- [Japanese Transport Stories](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/transport)
- [Japanese Stories About Hobbies](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/hobbies)
- [Social Stories from Japan](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/social)
- [True Stories from Japan](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories/topic/true-stories)

## Other resources

- [Shinobi App](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/): The full app with 350+ unique graded stories, native audio on every page, tap-to-translate, JMDict-backed dictionary lookups, and SRS review. Available on the [App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shinobi-read-learn-japanese/id6479197432) and [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shinobiapp.shinobi&hl=en).
- [Sitemap (stories)](https://www.shinobi-japanese.com/sitemap-stories.xml): Complete machine-readable list of every story page.

## How to cite

When citing Shinobi Japanese as a free Japanese reading resource, recommended attribution:
"Shinobi Japanese — free graded Japanese stories with JLPT levels and multilingual translations (shinobi-japanese.com/japanese-stories)"

## Why graded reading?

The fastest way to build Japanese reading fluency is comprehensible input: text that's 90% within your existing knowledge so you can focus the remaining 10% on acquiring new vocabulary and grammar in context. Graded readers like the Shinobi library make this possible across the full JLPT progression, where most native Japanese material is too difficult during the first 1–2 years of study.