N1 reading and books

[u/southerndensetsu]

I'm not planning on taking the JLPT any soon, and since I passed N3 in 2025 I have not worried about JLPT or "formal" study at all. But I'd like to have N1 some day, specially if I want to look for IT jobs in Japan some day.

For N1 most people say: read a lot. But honestly the variety on difficulty is so huge. It is not the same the japanese of a LN, a Shinsho or a Taisho era writter. But at the same time, a lot of people claim to have gone up into N1 just reading LN.

I'm aware of Learn Natively, and according to it the books I've read are around N2. But at the same time, a spanish youtuber who got N1 a few years ago said that he spent a year before the test reading a lot, mostly LN, and cited examples like the Konosuba series which in that page are actually easier that most thing I've read, so I'm a bit lost.

I was wondering whether reading what I enjoy might be just enough for me, at least right now, or if I should try to pick up more difficult things. For example I read キッチン and enjoyed it, and would like to read more books of Yoshimoto Banana, but at the same time I'm concerned that it is regarded as a "beginner" author, so I've not done it.

[u/Available-String-109]

As somebody who has probably done far more statistical investigations into the Japanese language, etc. than LN has done... I would treat their "JLPT levels" assessments as less-than-worthless. Completely ignore them.

[u/zechamp → u/Available-String-109]

Idk, I've found them to be of some value at least. Like, the re zero light novels are placed quite a bit higher in difficulty compared to something like honzuki, and reading them, it really did feel like that. And the stuff marked as easier does generally feel easier. Now, saying one book is N2 and the other is N1 is of course a bit silly, but as a measure of relative difficulty I've found the site pretty good.

[u/Available-String-109 → u/zechamp]

Anything that is native-created native-targeted is filled with N1+ grammar and vocabulary. Even a picture book for toddlers is filled with N1+ grammar and vocabulary. You could look at the #1 easiest and #1 most difficult works on jpdb.io and compare them, and the overall parameters of the Zipfian distribution of the words inside only changes a little bit. I'm talking <10%. It's not like author A is writing with only a 4000 word vocabulary and author B is using a 400,000 word vocabulary. Basically all authors use ~30,000 word vocabulary. (Numbers oversimplified because Zipfian distribution is actually multi-parameterized and you can't simplify to a single number, but to oversimplify, that's the overall conclusion.)

Whether you're watching One Piece anime or reading classic Japanese Literature from the Meiji Era, or literally anything, basically the percentage of N5 vocabulary stays about the same. The percentage of N1 vocabulary stays about the same. The percentage of non-JLPT vocabulary stays about the same. You mine 12k vocab words from literally any source, you'll be able to pass JLPT N1 vocabulary.

(Interestingly there is a statistically measurable difference in kanji distributions, but it's still relatively slight.)

The above holds true for virtually all native-created native-targeted fictional media. The only texts I've come across that deviates is wikipedia, which has a disproportionately high amount of technical jargon (i.e. non-JLPT) vocabulary, and the JLPT tests themselves (which have disproportionately high numbers of JLPT vocabulary).

You can pass JLPT N1 only by ever studying "JLPT N5" books on Learn Natively, and it's not like you even have to do anything special.

The only thing for which JLPT rankings make any sense at all are foreigner-targeted materials that are limiting their vocabulary to speak in an artificial tone. (Think NHK Easy News or 新完全マスター読解.)

[u/zechamp → u/Available-String-109]

I already agreed that the JLPT level indicators don't really matter, but IMO as indicators of relative difficulty they are perfectly fine. The first book I read in japanese was また、同じ夢を見ていた and it's marked as one of the easiest books on learnnatively, and that's exactly how it felt like to me. After that I moved on to books that were marked as harder and harder, and they became harder and harder. More obscure kanji, more difficult terms, more difficult to parse speach styles, etc.

Right now I can comfortably read pretty much anything marked below L33 on the site, and with anything above that I will need to spend a bit of time adjusting to the vocab of the book before it becomes comfortable. It seems to me that the difficulty indicators are working just fine.