*New* Difficulty Level Tags - Edited, please note changes! - Book Recommendations for Japanese Books

There has been a suggestion to require difficulty level tags with each review, and I think it is a great idea. Let me know your thoughts about these levels...if necessary I can adjust them depending on your input.

It has been suggested to include more gradations for easy books, since people just starting reading in Japanese might be more dependent on book recs than people who are more advanced readers and can handle just about anything. So I am splitting up easy books by approximate grade level.

NEW EDIT: When thinking about these levels, instead of interpreting them as "how difficult was the book to read for you", please think of them as "how difficult would the book be to read for a Japanese language learner whose Japanese may not be perfect". Your kanji skills may be awesome so it was a quick read for you, but what if someone had to struggle a bit more with kanji, would it still be a quick read?
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Beginning Early elementary grades. These are often all kana or might include just a few kanji with furigana. Also includes beginning-level texts prepared especially for Japanese-as-a-second-language students. Think Japanese equivalent of "See Spot Run" type readings that use simplified language for the purpose of teaching reading skills to beginning readers.

Very easy Upper elementary level "chapter book" level readings. More complex vocabulary and greater length than beginning level texts, but furigana on most or all kanji. Often includes pictures. Kaoru Hayamine's books (e.g. the detective series Meitantei Yumemizu Kiyoshiro) would fit in this category.

Quick read (Young Adult/teen reading level). A person who has passed JLPT Level 2 or 1 could expect to read one of these without too much trouble. I would put Yamada Yusuke's books at this level. Some of Higashino Keigo's shorter books would be too, but I would put his longer works like Byakuyakou in Moderate Difficulty for greater length and complexity.

Moderate difficulty (a normal reading level for Japanese adults). This is just "medium" difficulty for people with experience reading Japanese novels who can read a large number of kanji. A person who has passed JLPT level 1 could expect to read at this level, maybe using a dictionary sometimes, but you would be able to follow what was going on in the plot without too much confusion. I would put Kishi Yusuke's works at this level.

Difficult Longer, more dense or hard to follow than normal prose. May require more effort and/or more use of a dictionary. Don't be afraid or embarrassed to put books in this category--we want to know if it's difficult!! If it had you thinking "what is going on?!" while you were reading, and you are usually a good reader, it should probably go in this category.

Extra-difficult Uses archaic language, and would be difficult for native speakers.
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There is probably some overlap between these and some room for subjectivity, but I thought we might want to have more levels than just easy-medium-hard. So if you think these are OK, would you please go back to your old reviews and give them a difficulty level tag? And tag new reviews with these from now on? This will make it easier for community members to find books at a suitable reading level for them. Thank you!!!
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EDIT: I don't think we have any "beginning" level texts reviewed here yet, so if you have read one or more at this level and you want to review them, please post your reviews, with the "beginning" tag! That will be a big help to members who want a good manageable starting point to reading in Japanese. Thank you!

Tags: beginning, difficult, extra-difficult, moderate difficulty, quick read, very easy

12 comments — :

( 12 comments — Leave a comment )

niki112be

2012-01-24 04:25 pm (UTC)

I'm okay with these. I'll change the tag on my review^^.

bblue23

2012-01-25 01:45 am (UTC)

Thanks!

ramsk

2012-01-24 07:14 pm (UTC)

These new tags are very useful, so thank you! I went through my past reviews and added the new tags. I just hope I did it properly.

It's a judgment call you get to make as the reviewer, but looking over the way you classified things, I would say that you can classify many of the books you read as one level more difficult than you did. In particular I would call both 宮部みゆき and 松本清張　moderate difficulty writers. In the case of 点と線, it was written in 1958, so even though it is short, the language is a bit older and more stilted than what is used today, so it's not going to be as easy to read as a book that was published last year. And it is definitely written at the reading level of adult, not teen. 宮部みゆき has a fairly literary style. She sometimes hints at things and leaves things for the reader to figure out, so I think her writing is more challenging than a "quick read" and should probably go in the moderate difficulty section. Plus, 火車 is pretty long, and I remember it using some uncommon/difficult to translate idiomatic expressions.

And I would call 黒い雨 Difficult. It is both old and literary:)

But the final call is up to you:)

2012-01-25 08:04 am (UTC)

Thank you for pointing this out for me. To be honest, I had some troubles remembering the style of those books, since I it has been two years since I've written the reviews. I tried to change the tags of the reviews that you mentioned (but I'm not sure I managed to do it in the end, because the old tags still appear along the new ones). I'll go once again through all the reviews and see whether the tags should be changed in other cases, too.

2012-01-25 03:51 pm (UTC)

I removed the old tags from the three that were mentioned. Let me know if you want me to remove any more old tags.

点と線 may be borderline between quick read and moderate difficulty, because it does have a lot of dialogue and is short. But even in the first few sentences it uses rather sophisticated vocabulary like 某省and long strings of kanji like 機械工具商安田商会. I just think someone might stumble over those if they are not used to it, for example non-native speakers who are used to reading more contemporary authors. I think you are very good at kanji so maybe you weren't thinking about it from the perspective of someone who has to try a little harder to read kanji. I guess the point about these levels is not "how difficult was the book to read for you" but "how difficult would the book be to read for a Japanese language learner whose Japanese may not be perfect". But I left the "yomiyasui" tag in, so that preserves your impression that the book was easy to read for you.

2012-01-25 06:23 pm (UTC)

I find it a bit awkward for a book to be tagged as both "moderate difficulty" and "yomiyasui", so please remove the "yomiyasui" tag. I would have removed it myself, but I can't :) Thank you for your trouble!

2012-01-26 03:27 am (UTC)

No problem, removed! I wish every user could remove tags, it's weird.

pm215

2012-01-25 11:41 pm (UTC)

Yes, I think I'd agree that 点と線 is "moderate difficulty"; when I was retagging my previous reviews my rule of thumb was that a Japanese novel for adults ought to be a 'moderate' unless it was particularly obviously difficult or easy. (Approaching the 'quick/moderate' border from the other side, I actually put one young adult/light novel [涼宮ハルヒの退屈] in 'moderate' rather than 'quick read' because I think it's got more convoluted grammar than your average LN.)

Oh, while we're on the subject of tags, we have "akutagawa prize" but maybe we should have some other tags for other literary awards? Quite a few of the SF books I've reviewed have been either Seiun or Nihon SF Taishō award winners. I don't know whether we should have a tag per award, or just a catch-all 'award-winning' tag...

2012-01-26 03:37 am (UTC)

a Japanese novel for adults ought to be a 'moderate' unless it was particularly obviously difficult or easy.

I agree, and that ought to be a good rule of thumb. I also agree young adult/light novels might go in moderate if they have convoluted grammar or are a bit hard to follow, etc. We can't always tell by the genre how difficult that particular book will be.

I will add Seiun and Nihon SF Taisho as you suggested! Great idea! I'll hit up Wikipedia for the names of some other awards.

2012-01-24 10:24 pm (UTC)

I've gone back and tagged my old reviews. I suspect the me of three years ago and the me of now would disagree about the borderlines between "quick read", "moderate" and "difficult", though :-)

2012-01-25 01:57 am (UTC)

Thanks. I am glad you put some things in the "Difficult" category. And I agree 姑獲鳥の夏 is a good pick for that section. The mythology and philosophy make it more difficult than average, though it's very rewarding. We don't have any "extra-difficult" books yet, but feel free to put some books in there if you read some that are very challenging. It is somewhat subjective, but hopefully the more we classify things the more we'll get used to making that kind of judgement and standardizing it so we all mean the same thing by each level:)

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Book Recommendations for Japanese Books