Reading Weekly Shonen Jump Titles

Japanese Language Reading
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I’ve bought the sōshūhen reprints, for the large format and higher quality paper, of the Japanese Dragon Ball and Hunter x Hunter manga as future titles to really sink my teeth in to reading. My question is, is there an approximate Joyo/grade level for reading Weekly Shonen Jump titles so that I have a good idea of about when I should start attempting to read these so I’m not diving in too deep beyond my competency? Or to rephrase, about what age would a kid in Japan be able to reasonably begin reading and understanding a Weekly Shonen Jump series?

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Here’s a definition of 少年:

年が若い人。特に、年少の男子。ふつう、7、8歳くらいから15、6歳くらいまでをいう。

So usually anywhere from around 7 to 16, which isn’t particularly helpful for figuring out reading difficulty.

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Yeah I was reading the wikipedia article on it about the demographics and it sounds like it’s anywhere from elementary kids (though with no age specified) to mid teens. :sweat_smile:

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G6 (elementary school kanji) are pretty much covered by the mid-30s, at which point you should be good.

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Ok. So still a ways to go unless I just want to be a masochist. :sweat_smile::joy:

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just keep going :slight_smile: i’m not there yet either.

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Well even disregarding kanji, there’s a lot of words that Japanese people are exposed to at even a young age. A lot of kids can easily get by with furigana because chances are they probably know the words already, which is very unlikely to be the case for us learners.

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well manga with furigana are possible anytime, depending on your general level and your pain tolerance. you can look them up easily, since you got the reading :slight_smile:

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Ok. So I’ll stick to the first and second grade reader books for now to get more vocab. I wasn’t expecting to read them yet so I’ll just continue to hold and maybe make that a goal for early next year to start one of the two.

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@OmukaiAndi It’s still very tedious having to look up a ton of words, but I agree that it’s possible. I do it now and will continue to because I think the benefit and fun outweighs the pain.

@athomasm Since you’re buying them anyway, every once in a while just try to read a page or two and see how much you can understand. :slight_smile:

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