How to read vertical Japanese (縦書き)

Japanese can be written horizontally (横書き, yokogaki), left to right like English, or vertically (縦書き, tategaki). Most websites, textbooks and business documents are horizontal, but novels, newspapers, manga and a lot of literature are vertical. If you want to read real Japanese, you will meet both.

Which way to read

1. Start at the top right.
2. Read down each column.
3. Move to the next column on the left.

Books set vertically bind on the right, so you turn pages from left to right, and what an English reader thinks of as the back cover is the front. Try the sample below, starting at the top of the right-hand column:

毎朝まいあさ、駅えきまで歩あるきながら単語たんごを五いつつ覚おぼえます。「ちょっと大変たいへんですね」と友達ともだちに言いわれましたが、10分ぷんだけです。

On a narrow screen, the sample scrolls sideways.

What changes when text turns vertical

• Furigana moves to the right of the kanji instead of sitting above it.
• Punctuation such as 。 and 、 sits in the top-right corner of its square.
• Small kana such as っ, ゃ, ゅ and ょ also shift to the top right.
• The long-vowel mark ー becomes a vertical line.
• Quotation brackets 「 」 turn 90 degrees, so a quote opens with ﹁ at the top and closes with ﹂ at the bottom.
• Numbers are often written in kanji (十, 二十八). Short Western numbers can be set sideways inside a single square, like the 10 in the sample. This is called 縦中横 (tate-chū-yoko).
• Latin letters are usually rotated sideways or set upright one by one.

Manuscript paper (原稿用紙)

Japanese students learn to write on 原稿用紙 (genkō yōshi), paper ruled into a grid of squares. The same rules shape how vertical text looks in print:

• Each character, including each kana, gets its own square.
• Punctuation and closing brackets take a square too, but never start a column. If one falls at the top, it shares the last square of the previous column.
• A new paragraph starts one square down.

How to get comfortable with it

• Start with furigana on, then turn it off for words you know so your eyes learn to move down the column without stopping.
• Read aloud for the first few passages. It forces you to follow the column all the way down instead of skipping.
• Use short texts at or slightly below your level. Vertical layout is a new skill, so the content shouldn't be hard as well.
• Switch layouts. Reading the same passage horizontally and then vertically shows you the characters are identical. Only the direction changes.

Reading is one of the five skills the JLPT tests. See how it fits with the others in the JLPT test sections explained.