# Japanese OCR: copy the Japanese text out of an image

Japanese OCR turns the kanji, hiragana and katakana in a photo into text you can copy, search and paste into a dictionary. Upload a JPG, PNG, WEBP or one-page PDF below and the first lines appear in seconds, in Japanese, horizontal or vertical. A free account opens the full text as .txt or Word, and the LoreAI app also translates the page into an editable English Word file.

## How to get Japanese text from an image

1. **Choose the image.** A photo of a page, a screenshot, a scan or the first page of a PDF, as JPG, PNG, WEBP or HEIC, up to 5 MB.
2. **Press Get the text.** The tool reads the Japanese with optical character recognition. The first lines show up after a few seconds.
3. **Enter your email and the code.** We send a 6-digit code. It opens the full text and creates a free account if you have none, with no password to set.
4. **Copy or download.** Copy the Japanese in one click, or download it as a .txt file or a Word document with the tables rebuilt.

## What Japanese text does it read?

It reads printed Japanese in all three scripts at once, the way a real page mixes them. Kanji, hiragana and katakana come back as Unicode text, so you can paste a word into Jisho or Google Translate, search the file or quote it in an email.

- **Vertical text**: Columns that run top to bottom and right to left, as in novels, newspapers and older letters, come back in reading order
- **Horizontal text**: Forms, certificates, product labels, slides and web screenshots
- **Mixed scripts**: Kanji, kana, katakana loanwords, romaji and Arabic numerals in one line, kept as written
- **Tables**: Rows and cells of a pay slip, timetable or invoice, rebuilt as a real table in the Word file
- **Full-width characters**: Full-width digits and punctuation such as 。and 「」 stay as they are on the page
- **Seals**: A red hanko stays in place in the Word file, where it is on the original

## Free ways to do Japanese OCR

Your phone or your Google account may already read Japanese. They differ in what you can keep afterwards.

*Japanese OCR options, checked on November 3, 2026*

| Option | Where it works | Japanese | What you get |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Live Text on iPhone and iPad | An iPhone XS, iPhone XR or later with iOS 15 or later[1] | Listed as a supported language[2] | A selection or all of the text, copied[1] |
| Google Drive, Open with Google Docs | Any browser, for JPEG, PNG or GIF files of 2 MB or smaller[3] | Listed as a supported language[3] | A Google Doc. Google says tables and columns are not likely to be detected[3] |
| LoreAI Japanese OCR | Any browser, for JPG, PNG, WEBP, HEIC or a one-page PDF up to 5 MB, 10 a day with a free account | Kanji, kana, vertical and horizontal text | Text to copy, a .txt file, or a Word file with tables |

Live Text is the quickest way to grab a sign or a menu line. For a whole page you want to keep, study or translate, a downloadable file with the layout and tables intact saves retyping.

## From Japanese text to an English Word file

The free tool gives the text back in Japanese. When you need it in English, the [LoreAI app](https://www.loreai.org/app) reads the whole document, detects Japanese by itself and translates it into English or one of 105 languages. You download an editable Word file with the headings, lists and tables in the original order, names in romaji and dates converted, such as 2024年3月8日 to 8 March 2024.

A family register, a school transcript or a contract of several pages goes in as one PDF and comes back as one Word file. Your first document is free, up to 3 pages. For a photo of a Japanese document, see [how to translate a Japanese image to English](https://www.loreai.org/translate-image-to-english/japanese), and for a full PDF, [how to translate a Japanese PDF to English](https://www.loreai.org/translate-pdf/japanese-to-english).

## How to photograph a Japanese page

- Shoot straight down so that the columns of vertical text stay parallel.
- Get close enough that small kanji are sharp. Google's guidance for its own converter is text at least 10 pixels high[3].
- Use daylight or an even lamp, without a shadow across the text.
- Turn the photo upright before you upload it, even for vertical text.
- For a screenshot of a website or a PDF, upload the screenshot rather than a photo of the screen.

## What happens to your image

The image goes to LoreAI's OCR provider, which reads it once and deletes it right after. The text stays on LoreAI's server for 1 hour so you can open it after signing in, and until then only the browser that uploaded it can see it. Then it is deleted.

## Questions people ask

### Is this Japanese OCR free?

Yes, with a free account. You see the first lines before signing up, and the account gives you 10 runs a day without using up your free document in the app.

### Can it read vertical Japanese text?

Yes. Vertical columns are read top to bottom and right to left, and the text comes back in that reading order as normal lines.

### Does it translate the Japanese?

The free tool returns the text in Japanese. The LoreAI app translates the document into English or another language and gives you a Word file.

### Can I extract Japanese text from a game or website screenshot?

Yes. Upload the screenshot and you get the Japanese as text you can copy and look up word by word. The result is text or a Word file, not a picture with the words replaced.

### Does it read a PDF with several pages?

The free tool reads page 1 of a PDF. The app reads every page of the document into one file.

## Sources

1. [Apple Support: Copy and translate text from photos on your iPhone or iPad](https://support.apple.com/en-us/120004), accessed November 3, 2026
2. [Apple: iOS Feature Availability, Live Text](https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/), accessed November 3, 2026
3. [Google Drive Help: Convert PDF and photo files to text](https://support.google.com/drive/answer/176692?hl=en), accessed November 3, 2026

By Matt Mountain · Updated November 3, 2026