Terms of use

By visiting and using Rakuyomi you agree to the terms below. If there is something here you do not agree with, the simplest remedy is to stop using the site.

We have tried to write this in plain English rather than legal boilerplate. That does not make it any less real — it is still an agreement between you and Rakuyomi.

This page sits alongside the Privacy Policy. These terms cover what you may and may not do on Rakuyomi; the Privacy Policy covers what we do with your data.

Rakuyomi is a free Japanese reading site: passages with furigana, in-place dictionary lookups, reading-comprehension quizzes with answer explanations, a vocabulary and kanji game, and a tool for analysing Japanese text you paste in yourself.

You can read passages and use the text analyser without an account. An account is only needed for the features that keep your own progress.

Rakuyomi is a personal project, not the product of an educational institution. We may change, pause or add features at any time, and we do not promise the site will be available 100% of the time.

Not affiliated with the JLPT organisers

Rakuyomi is NOT affiliated with, sponsored by, reviewed by or endorsed by the Japan Foundation, Japan Educational Exchanges and Services (JEES), or any body that administers the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT).

The N1–N5 labels used across the site describe difficulty in terms learners already recognise. They are not an official assessment of your level.

You sign in with a Google account or with a link sent to your email. There is no password to set, and none to lose.

• Use an email address you actually control — whoever can read that inbox can reach your Rakuyomi account.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account.
• Do not impersonate someone else, and do not share one account between several people.
• If you think someone else has got into your account, tell us through the Contact page.

Rakuyomi runs on one small server shared by every learner using it. The limits below exist so the site stays usable for everyone, not to make life difficult for you.

• Do not bulk-download (crawl or scrape) the site's content to rebuild it as another service or as your own dataset.
• Do not try to get around rate limits, the sign-in gate, or admin permissions.
• Do not probe for security holes in order to exploit them. If you find one, please tell us first — that is genuinely welcome.
• Do not use the site for anything unlawful, or to post harassment, hate, fraud or spam.
• Do not try to overload the system, including by scripting the text analyser in a loop.

Comments, wrong-answer reports and anything else you submit stay yours. We claim no ownership of them.

By posting, you let Rakuyomi display that content on the site for other learners to read. That is all — we do not sell it, sub-license it, or use it in advertising.

You are responsible for what you post, and you confirm you have the right to post it.

Moderation

We may hide or remove comments that break the rules above, and in serious or repeated cases we may suspend the account.

A wrong-answer report is advice, not an instruction: we read every one, check it against the passage ourselves, and only change an answer when the report turns out to be right. Every answer-key change keeps the previous value so it can be undone.

The reading passages

Rakuyomi's passages are excerpts from published works and from exam-preparation material, used for study, language annotation and commentary. Copyright in those excerpts belongs to the original authors and publishers; Rakuyomi does not own them and makes no claim to.

Each passage carries a source line wherever the source can be identified.

If you hold the rights to a passage on this site and want it taken down, contact us — we will remove it, no argument.

Dictionary data

Rakuyomi's dictionary lookups, readings and proper-name data are built on the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group (EDRDG) files — JMdict, JMnedict and KANJIDIC — used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). Copyright in those files belongs to the EDRDG.

The Vietnamese glosses, the grammar notes and the passage translations are Rakuyomi's own additions.

Rakuyomi's own work

The design, source code, logo, answer explanations and passage translations are Rakuyomi's. You are welcome to read, study and quote them with attribution; copying them wholesale to rebuild the site elsewhere is not.

Rakuyomi is provided "as is". We take the content seriously, but we cannot guarantee all of it is correct.

• Furigana and vocabulary analysis are generated by machine. On proper names and rare readings, the machine still gets it wrong.
• Answer keys and explanations have been reviewed end to end by answering every question blind and comparing — and in the process we corrected 29 answer keys that were already wrong in the corpus. Which means the corpus did contain errors, and may still contain ones nobody has caught.
• The Vietnamese and English translations are study aids, not polished literary translations.
• A dictionary gloss may not carry the exact shade of meaning the word has in a particular passage.

Rakuyomi is a self-study tool, not a test-prep programme with a guaranteed outcome. Whether you pass an exam depends on a great deal that lies outside this site.

If you spot something wrong, the report button under the question is the fastest way to get it fixed.

To the extent the law allows, Rakuyomi is not liable for indirect losses arising from your use of the site — exam results, time spent, or decisions you make based on what you read here.

Rakuyomi is a free service and this clause reflects that. It is not intended to exclude any liability the law does not allow to be excluded.

You can stop using Rakuyomi at any time. If you want your account and its study data deleted, contact us.

We may suspend or end access for an account that seriously or repeatedly breaks these terms. Where a case is not clear-cut, we will get in touch first and give you a chance to explain.

As Rakuyomi gains features, these terms may be updated. The date of the most recent change is always at the top of this page.

For anything substantial we will say so on the site rather than edit quietly. Continuing to use Rakuyomi after a change means you accept the new version.

These terms are governed by the law of Vietnam. If a dispute comes up, we would much rather sort it out by talking first — most things take one email.

Questions about these terms, copyright takedown requests, or security reports — please use the Contact page: