Read two of Japan's most beloved folktales, broken down sentence by sentence for upper-beginner learners.
An inch-tall samurai who takes on an oni with a sewing needle for a sword. A luminous princess discovered inside a stalk of bamboo who turns out not to be of this world. The Inch-High Samurai and Kaguya Hime are two pillars of Japanese folklore — and Kaguya, in its original 10th-century form, is the oldest surviving work of Japanese prose narrative, older than The Tale of Genji by a century. This volume gives you the language to read them both in Japanese, with line-by-line vocabulary, grammar notes, native-speaker audio, and a simple English translation for self-checking.
New in the 2026 edition:
- Bonus unlock code inside the book — redeem at Makoto+ to study every sentence from this book interactively, on the web or in the mobile app
- New watercolor illustration and audio QR codes on every story's opening page
- Hook teaser and Before-You-Read intro for each story, pointing you toward the grammar and vocabulary patterns to watch for
- Full Exercises sections with answer keys (Comprehension Questions, Particle Fill-in, Grammar Pattern Hunt, Translation Comparison) for both stories
- Resized furigana — ruby now sits closer to the base text, the way good Japanese typography should
- Running headers, page numbers, and sumi-e section ornaments throughout
The two stories:
1. The Inch-High Samurai — An old couple prays for a child and is given a tiny boy no taller than a pinky. When he comes of age, he sets off for the capital with a sewing needle for a sword, a rice bowl for a boat, and chopsticks for oars — and on the road home meets an oni who learns the hard way that bravery doesn't scale with size.
2. Kaguya Hime (Princess Kaguya) — An old bamboo cutter finds a glowing stalk in his grove and, inside it, a child no larger than his palm. Within months she has grown into the most beautiful young woman in Japan; emperors and princes vie for her hand. But Kaguya keeps looking up at the moon and weeping, because where she truly belongs isn't on this earth at all.
What's inside:
- Each story presented three ways: with line-by-line vocabulary, in plain Japanese (for unscaffolded reading practice), and in English summary
- Word-by-word breakdowns with furigana over every kanji
- Grammar spotlights, cultural notes, and reading tips throughout
- Free MP3 audio downloads — natural speed and slowed down — recorded by a native speaker
- Free Anki decks for pre-study
- Bonus unlock code for Makoto+ Sentence Explorer
- No sign-up required for the audio
Who this is for: Upper-beginner to lower-intermediate learners. You'll need solid kana and a working sense of basic grammar. (New to hiragana? Take our free two-week crash course at TheJapanesePage.com/hiragana.)
Questions or requests for future readers? The authors' personal email addresses are inside the book.
Want a FREE book?
Head over to ClayBoutwell.com for fiction and/or TheJapanShop.com for Japanese instructional books. FREE!
Clay Boutwell and his wife Yumi are the authors of several top ten books on learning Japanese, including: Hiragana, the Basics of Japanese, and Hikoichi, the first in their Japanese Reader Collection series. They currently have seventeen titles and are slowly adding more readers and study guides as ebooks and paperbacks. And...EVERY purchase comes with FREE MP3s!
His fiction includes thrillers (Tanaka and the Yakuza's Daughter), mysteries (Two Tocks before Midnight), and, yes, superheroes! (The Temporal)
ClayBoutwell.com
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