Can I read japanese books on kindle?

If you’re like me, you’ve spent years learning Kanji, reading whatever you can your hands on, with a Japanese dictionary in one hand and a book in the other. To people like you and I, the era of the eBook is a veritable shangri-la for reading Japanese. 

When it comes to eBook platforms, Amazon and Kindle are the heavy hitters. So the first big question is: 

Can I read japanese books on kindle?

Yes, it is possible to read Japanese books on Kindle. 

The basic steps to do that are is:

1. create a Japanese Amazon account, and 
2. log in to the Japanese account on a browser 
3. Purchase the item
4. Download the item to your Kindle device, or app.

Of course, there are few hurdles that you need to clear on the way to making these simple steps happen and accessing the hundreds of thousands of titles on the Amazon Japan store. These are outlined below.

Once the hurdles are cleared, the Kindle Books offer a Japanese reading experience where, gasp, you look up any Kanji with the tap of a finger, get an English or Japanese definition, and add words to a list for later review. 

My physical dictionary-the-size-of-a-brick-carrying young Japanese self would have been very jealous.

Strangely, there is a lot of vague advice on the internet about how to get these Japanese ebooks onto your device, but often the info is incomplete or contradictory. Copyright restrictions exist that create artificial borders between regions, making it surprisingly confusing to purchase and download your Japanese ebook  and make it to the fabled shangri-la land. 

So I thought I would set out here in simple steps to make it easy:

How to Purchase Japanese Books On Kindle and Amazon Store

1. Create an account on Amazon Japan 

Visit the Japanese version of the Amazon web store (ending in .jp). It is best to use a different email address than the one that you use for another Amazon Store in another country. This avoids the problem of your Kindle app trying to automatically log you in to your other country’s account, which stops you from being able to login using your Japanese account.

2. Open a desktop web browser, go to Amazon.co.jp and hover over “Accounts & Lists” in the top right of the screen.
3. Choose “Your Content and Devices” from the dropdown menu.

4. Click on “Preferences”

5. Under Country/Region Settings change “Current country/region” to Japan and enter any Japanese address

This can be any random address you look up on Google Maps.

6. Navigate to the book you want to purchase on the Japanese Amazon store and submit order. 

You do not need a Japanese credit card to purchase from the Japanese Amazon store. Any valid payment card will do.

7. Log into your Kindle device or eReader using your Japanese Amazon account details and enjoy reading your Japanese eBook!

That’s it? Simple right? Well, hopefully. There are a few other things to consider though.

Drawbacks of Japanese Books on Kindle

The biggest drawback of using Japanese books on Kindle or Amazon is that you can’t be logged into both your Japanese and non-Japanese account at one time. This means that when you, say, want to switch between your books purchased on the American Amazon and Amazon Japan you have to log out of one account on your device and log into the other. This in itself would be annoying, but the more annoying part about this is that anything that was downloaded on the device will be deleted and replaced with the content from the other device. If you are an English-speaking reader of Japanese, chances are you are also an English speaking reader of English. So you are likely to come across this problem.

Is there a way to get around the English to Japanese switching problem on Kindle devices?

There are a couple of work arounds for this issue. 

Remove DRM and import

The first is quite involved and not for the faint hearted. In short the process involves using a combination of three pieces of software Calibre, DRM Removal Plugin and Kindle Previewer.

The whole process is abley outlined by Matt Vs. Japan in this video.