From a question to Japanese literature
Humanitext Aozora
Explore more than 17,000 works from Aozora Bunko through conversation. Answers cite the works and link back to the original text, supporting both discoveries across authors and close inquiry within a single book.
What you can do
- Explore more than 17,000 Aozora Bunko works in everyday language
- Follow citations directly to the work and its original text
- Include or exclude material by category, author, and work
- Choose a response style for research, reading, dialogue, or creative prompts
How it works—and how to use it well
Walk through literature by asking a question
Humanitext Aozora is a conversational way to explore more than 17,000 works in Aozora Bunko, Japan’s open digital library. It can help locate a half-remembered line, but it also welcomes questions shaped by a theme or scene: how Sōseki and Ōgai write solitude differently, for example, or which short stories use rain as a turning point.
Each explanation is accompanied by the works and passages on which it is based. Select a citation to view the Japanese original beside an English summary, or continue to the work in Aozora Bunko. The important move is from a plausible answer back to the language of the work itself.
Begin with one author you care about
- “Recommend Akutagawa stories whose narrators may not be trustworthy.”
- “Compare several passages in which Miyazawa Kenji writes about stars.”
- “Find stories set on a summer night that I could read in about half an hour.”
Aozora suggests possible follow-up questions after each response. You can begin with a favourite author or a word that interests you; a fully formed research question is not required.
Browse widely, then define the corpus
Set the scope by Nippon Decimal Classification (NDC), author, or work, and exclude material that is not relevant. The same interface can support a broad thematic search across writers or a sustained inquiry into a single text. Search fields accept names across languages, and the interface is available in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
Response modes range from concise Q&A and detailed explanation to dialogue, creative prompts, and custom instructions. When using a creative mode, keep AI-generated language distinct from quotations from Aozora Bunko. Even a cited response may miss the larger narrative or historical context of a passage.
Keep a record of the reading
Conversation threads are stored locally in your browser and can be exported as Markdown or JSON. This makes it possible to preserve the path from question to quotation to revised question—for course preparation, reading groups, or the exploratory stages of research.
Humanitext Aozora is not a shortcut to a definitive interpretation. It is an entrance into texts that ordinary keyword searches may not have brought together, and an invitation to begin reading for yourself.
Other apps
From a question to the classical source
Humanitext Antiqua
Ask questions about Greek and Roman literature in your own words. Each response points back to the passages on which it is based, so conversation leads naturally into reading and verification.
From paper sources to researchable data
Humanitext OCR
Turn images and PDFs into usable text with AI that takes the document’s context into account. Process many PDFs at once, proofread line by line, and produce searchable PDFs in one continuous workflow.
The ancient world through place and time
Humanitext GEO
Humanitext GEO is an interactive visualization that maps the lives, places, and works of ancient Greek and Roman authors across time and space. Combining a timeline with a geographic map powered by ancient world cartography, it lets you explore where classical authors lived, worked, and traveled throughout the Mediterranean. Its Explore feature uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to answer questions about ancient cities, drawing on passages written by authors who were active in that era — grounded in primary sources from Greek and Latin literature.
Read the classics beside the original
Humanitext Reader
Read Greek and Latin classics sentence by sentence, with the original beside translations in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Dictionaries and grammatical notes support the reading, while reader feedback steadily improves the library.