Bungo Bible — iPhone & iPad app for the Meiji-era Japanese Bible

FEATURES

Six things the app gets right

Everything in the app exists to serve one thing: reading a classical text comfortably on a modern screen.

01 ──

All 66 books

The complete Old Testament (39 books) and New Testament (27 books), bundled with the app and readable entirely offline.

02 ──

Choice of typeface

Switch freely between mincho (serif) and gothic (sans) Japanese faces, with fine-grained control over text size.

03 ──

Traditional colours

Five highlight colours drawn from the classical Japanese palette — yamabuki, wakatake, asagi, sakura and kaki — pale enough never to shout over the text.

04 ──

Bookmarks and notes

Save any verse and attach a note of your own. Every saved entry jumps straight back to the verse it came from.

05 ──

Page colours

White, black, cream, or automatic. Choose a background that stays easy on the eyes through a long sitting.

06 ──

iCloud sync

Bookmarks, highlights and notes follow you between iPhone and iPad. No tracking, no analytics, no advertising — ever.

SCREENS

What the pages look like

Shown on iPhone; the iPad layout is the same. All screenshots are from the app itself.

John chapter 3 in a Japanese serif face, with reading tabs for Genesis 1, Psalm 23 and John 3 across the top — **The text**Old character forms and historical kana, as printed

Psalm 23 on a cream page, with verse 1 highlighted in pale green and verse 4 in pale blue — **Highlights and bookmarks**Five traditional colours, none of them loud

The saved verses screen, with tabs for bookmarks, highlights and notes, listing John 3:16, Psalm 23:1 and Genesis 1:1-3 — **Saved verses**Bookmarks, highlights and notes in one list

The table of contents, with Old and New Testament tabs and the Japanese book names listed — **Contents**Thirty-nine books and twenty-seven, by name

Display settings: 18pt text size, serif or sans typeface, automatic, white, black or cream page, and an iCloud sync switch — **Settings**Size, typeface, page colour, iCloud sync

John chapter 3 on a black page, for reading at night — **At night**White, black, cream, or follow the system

ABOUT

What is the Bungo-yaku?

Bungo (文語) means the literary language — the formal written Japanese used before the modern colloquial style took hold. The Bungo-yaku Bible is the translation made in that register: the Old Testament completed in 1887 as the Meiji Version, and the New Testament revised in 1917 as the Taisho Revised Version.

For Japanese readers it occupies roughly the place the King James Version holds in English — no longer the everyday text, but the one whose cadence shaped the language, and the one writers have quoted for more than a century. Its rhythm is unlike anything in contemporary Japanese, and that is precisely the reason to read it.

This app exists to present that text well: no clutter, no accounts, no network calls — just the pages, and the tools you need to keep your place in them.

PRICE

One purchase, nothing more

A paid app with no subscriptions and no in-app purchases. Buy it once and the whole of both testaments is yours to read.

¥1,500 · one-time

All 66 books, every chapter, with no further charges. Price shown for the Japanese App Store; the App Store charges the equivalent local price in other regions.

FAQ

Before you buy

How much of it works offline?

All of it. Every one of the 66 books ships inside the app, and reading, bookmarks, highlights and notes never touch the network. Only iCloud sync, if you turn it on, needs a connection.

Is there a subscription or any in-app purchase?

No. ¥1,500 once, and that is the whole of it — no subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads.

Which translations are included?

The Meiji Version (1887) for the 39 books of the Old Testament, and the Taisho Revised Version (1917) for the 27 books of the New — both in the old character forms and historical kana of the source text. See About and Text and provenance.

Can I sync between iPhone and iPad?

Yes. Bookmarks, highlights and notes sync across devices signed in to the same Apple Account. It is off by default; turn on iCloud sync in the settings screen. The data lives in your own iCloud and the developer cannot read it.

Can I change the type size and typeface?

Yes — a serif (mincho) or sans (gothic) face, a fine-grained size slider, and a page colour of white, black, cream, or automatic.

Is there full-text search?

Not in the current version. You navigate through the table of contents and the reading tabs, which keep up to eight chapters open at once. Search is on the list for a future update.

Does it show furigana (ruby) readings?

Not in the current version. Ruby readings for the harder classical words are in preparation and depend on the underlying text data being annotated.

What does it run on?

iPhone and iPad running iOS 17.0 or later.

SOURCES

Text and provenance

The scripture text in this app is taken from Japanese Wikisource, based on the following editions.

Old Testament

『明治元訳旧約聖書』

Meiji Version of the Old Testament (1887)

ja.wikisource.org/wiki/明治元訳旧約聖書

New Testament

『大正改訳新約聖書』

Taisho Revised Version of the New Testament (1917)

ja.wikisource.org/wiki/大正改訳新約聖書

The translations themselves are in the public domain. The digitised text held on Wikisource is published under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our thanks to the original publisher, the Japan Bible Society, and to the Wikisource editors whose transcription work made this app possible.

The Classical Japanese Bible