The Differences Between Reading Japanese Books with Furigana and Without Furigana

So I’ve now read a book with furigana and one without it and I want to reflect on some of the positives and negatives of each.

Note: Keep in mind this is just my opinion, and everyone learns differently. I am reading physical books, not e-books so I can’t easily look up unknown words without furigana.

The main difference is reading without furigana is much more like a test I think. It’s a test to see how much kanji you know from straight memorization or guessing the meaning based on the kanji that you know from other words. This is makes it kind of a less useful study tool in my opinion.

A book without furigana, you should just read and try to enjoy it. Don’t try to intensively look up and write down all the unknown words. It will take you a lifetime. Unless you really are just completely lost, you should only look up a few repeating words on each page. The good part is you are constantly testing that kanji knowledge in different sentences, so your kanji recognition may improve.

Now books with furigana can be used as real study tool for VOCAB (not kanji). I still remember a lot of the words I looked up for 天気の子 because it had furigana, so it was easy to look up the words and there’s a huge amount of repetition.

The best way I think to use the book as a vocabulary study tool is to pair it with an online flashcard deck such as Quizlet or Anki that YOU make. The key part is you make it. If some else makes it, you probably won’t remember as easily. The obvious bad part is your kanji skills may not improve as much because you will rely on furigana. It’s inevitable when it’s right there.

That being said, it all depends on your main objective.

What are you trying to get out of reading this book? The plot? A couple new words? New kanji? I think having an objective will help motivate you to finish that book whether or not it’s with or without furigana.

And that’s my take on it in this moment.