How to Read Original(Untranslated) Japanese Manga Online for Free

If you are reading my blog, I guess you are somewhat interested in Japanese language and/or culture. But what made you want to learn about Japan?

When I asked my Japanese learning friends; “Why did you start learning Japanese?“, a lot of them responded to me with the almost same answer; “Because I love Japanese Manga(Comics) and I want to enjoy them in Japanese someday!” I believe I can get the same answer from some of you too.

But then, have you ever wished if you could try reading Manga in Japanese online for free to see how much Japanese you can currently understand?

There are actually several websites you can legally sneak peak Japanese Manga for free. Some even allow you to read the entire comic for free.

As a Japanese living overseas who cannot easily get original Japanese Manga, I often read Manga for free on Yahoo! JAPAN website to check if there’s any Manga I might want to buy next time I go back to Japan, or… just for fun!

Today, I will explain how you can read original Japanese Manga online for free step by step, the way I am always enjoying.

<<UPDATE AS OF 3/1/2019>>

Since Yahoo! JAPAN switched its bookstore into ebookjapan, Yahoo! JAPAN Bookstore is no longer available. I created new post to read Japanese Manga for Free on ebookjapan, so please check this article to get the latest information: How to Read Original (Untranslated) Japanese Manga Online for Free – ebookjapan

First, go to Yahoo! JAPAN : https://www.yahoo.co.jp/

On the left side, near “主なサービス“(Services), click “一覧“(List) button.

The list of services tab will show up. Look for “ブックストア“(Bookstore), and click it.

Then, you will be navigated to Yahoo! JAPAN ブックストア (Yahoo! JAPAN Bookstore), where you can already see a lot of images from comics.

There are also a lot of free samples, which means you can read the first 10 to 50 pages of comics. But now, I will explain about the way you can read the entire comic for free.

Find the word “1冊まるごと無料“(Comics Entirely Free) on the left side, and click it.

Now, all the comics you see here are free to read. However, some are only available to those who have Yahoo! JAPAN accounts (* Please note, Yahoo! JAPAN account is different from Yahoo account by any other countries).

“ログイン特典” means logging-in privileges, and “全ユーザー対象” means for all users. Here, I assume most of you don’t have Yahoo! JAPAN accounts, so click “全ユーザー対象” tab.

And you will see all the comics you can enjoy for free. Here, you can see the cover images of comics, comic titles, volumes available for free, and the expiration date (until what date the comic is free to read). Now go ahead to click “読む“(To Read) button to start reading.

Once you click “読む“(To Read) button, the electronic version of Manga will be open.

And after, you simple keep clicking the left side of the screen to proceed reading. In case you don’t know yet, Japanese Manga are written from right to left. So you need to read from right to left.

For those of you who want to register for Yahoo! JAPAN to enjoy more Manga online free (registering for Yahoo! JAPAN and getting an account is free), I will explain how to register for Yahoo! JAPAN in a later post, so please come back again to check my blog sometimes 😉

Enjoy!!