Kotowa

Read Japanese, line by line.

A free reader for iPhone and iPad. Open a story, a comic or a video, read it one line at a time with furigana, and tap any word for its dictionary entry.

Download on the App Store

FreeNo accountNo adsNo trackingPacks and progress stay on your device

Kotowa showing a story in Japanese with furigana above the kanji, and each line split into coloured words.

Try it on a real line.

The first line of 蜘蛛の糸 by 芥川龍之介. Tap a word. Switch the layers the way you do in the app.

。

It happened one day.

One line at a time, with everything underneath.

The sheet for the word 咲いている: meaning, dictionary form, word class and the steps of its conjugation.

Tap a word.

Its meaning here, its dictionary form, how it conjugates and its entries in JMdict. Close the sheet and you are back on the line.

A story page with the English translation under the Japanese.

A translation underneath.

Show it, hide it, or add a second language when the pack has one. Read the Japanese first and check yourself after.

A manga page with the Japanese text of one panel, its furigana and translation underneath.

Comics, panel by panel.

Read a page, then the text of each panel with its furigana and translation.

Shown here: ブラックジャックによろしく by 佐藤秀峰, used under the author's free-use terms.

Read along with a video.

Link a video file from Files and the lines follow the audio, each with furigana and a translation. Tap a word and the video pauses on its dictionary entry. Close the entry and it carries on.

Shown here: Kizuna AI's SCP財団 video (CC BY-SA 3.0), one of the packs included in the app.

Three packs to start.

The content comes in packs. Kotowa includes these, and you can add your own.

  • A short story by 芥川龍之介Public domain, from Aozora Bunko.
  • A comic by 佐藤秀峰Used under the author's free-use terms.
  • A video by Kizuna AICC BY-SA 3.0. The pack holds the lines; you download the video and link it from Files.

Bring your own text.

Add a pack from the Files app or from an address. A pack is a folder of plain JSON files, so an AI assistant can write one for you from a text, subtitles or comic pages. Give it the guide.

https://kotowa.gellyfish.dev/make-a-pack.md

A pack you add is yours, for your own use. You are responsible for having the right to use what is in it.

"source": "今日は雨だ。",
"furigana": [
  { "text": "今日", "reading": "きょう" },
  { "text": "は" },
  { "text": "雨", "reading": "あめ" },
  { "text": "だ。" }
],
"gloss": [
  { "japanese": "今日", "pos": "noun",
    "translations": { "en": "today" } },
  { "japanese": "は", "pos": "particle",
    "translations": { "en": "topic marker" } }
]
One line of a pack, shortened from the guide's example. A checker you run on the folder catches mistakes before the app does.

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Your packs, progress and settings stay on your device, and nothing is sent to us.

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