Tadoku's material is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).

This is an updated version with so much more content than the post I made in June 2021 Reddit post.

There are now 7 separate PDFs partly due to size limitations and also just separating them by level:

    50 LVL 0 stories (848pg). 96.6 MB https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dSSvUb__gtjKHHsen1t0MGrxmnHi0N7h/view

    13 LVL 0 II (226 pg) 25.7 MB
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mZ--9mgzq9q2kM3TYb6DVYY09YPYocHu/view

    37 LVL 1 (550pg) 75.7 MB https://drive.google.com/file/d/1orNTiwGrIrEJUQGX4T_Y0RhKNMY5lJ3-/view

    17 LVL 2 (270pg) 33.7 MB https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dwGOOfJBy78mUwPjbL9Lh7814IDh5iO2/view

    25 LVL 3 (482pg) 55.1 MB
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I5iyrCqjnDDgVipCJnwuef3-Zk9ptaGZ/view

    12 LVL 4 (215pg) 90.8 MB
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zLAj__Kd8rD0hS2O2w-CtSoscnSQXfZQ/view?usp=sharing

    2 LVL 5 (90pg) 23.4 MB https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aSW2xhFsi7NRHE_2wnEb6hMZFdBBkXHN/view

Some of these stories have audio. Use the audio to help with proper pronunciation and to shadow read. The Audio can be found here: https://tadoku.org/japanese/audio-downloads/other-gr/#audiodownload-01

What is Tadoku? Four Golden Rules:

    １．やさしいものから読む - Start from scratch

    ２．辞書を引かないで読む - Don’t use a dictionary(my input: this does not mean never use one. it just means while you are reading don't do it. If you need to, wait until after finishing the story.)

    ３．わからないところは飛ばして読む - Skip over difficult words, phrases, and passages.

    ４．進まなくなったら他の本を読む - When the going gets tough, quit reading and pick up a new book.

In a simple explanation, Tadoku is where you read content (In this case the free graded reader PDFs) around your level for fun, and don't stress out about using a dictionary for every single word. Extensive reading instead of Intensive reading. Read a more detailed description here: https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/what-is-tadoku-en/# .

Tadoku is for both beginner readers (Lvl 0-1) up to late intermediate readers (Lvl 4-5). Read more detailed information on how the levels are structured here: https://tadoku.org/japanese/levels/ .

Level 0/JLPT N5: up to 400-word length, 350 vocabulary words +grammar

Level 1/JLPT N4-5: 400 to 1,500-word length, 350 vocabulary words +grammar

Level 2/JLPT N4: 1,500 to 3000-word length, 500 new vocabulary words +grammar

Level 3/JLPT N3-4: 2,500 to 6,000-word length, 800 new vocabulary words +grammar

Level 4/JLPT N3-2: 5,000 to 15,000-word length, 1300 new vocabulary words +grammar

Level 5/Jlpt N2: 8000-25,000 word length, 2000 new vocabulary words +grammar

The graded readers are made for adult language learners so they do not have kid talk like in children's books.

With graded readers, you will learn new vocab and see grammar as they are used in the stories over and over again.

The goal of graded readers is for you to be able to use them as a springboard to dive into native material easier instead of belly-flopping into native material as your first experience of reading.

To easy for you? The website also has recommended native material(Books/Manga) compatible with the Tadoku system. Just change the first drop-down tab that says level to what level you want and press the search button at the bottom to see compatible native content for that level.

Link here: https://tadoku.org/japanese/book-search?level=&series=&kind%5B%5D=040&kw=&order=register_desc

[If you see or find someone putting these PDFs behind a (Patreon/website) paywall DO NOT PAY FOR IT. Everything here is free, and yes this has been done in the past by other people that is why I am mentioning it.]