I tried using the AI 'Humanitext Aozora' which is packed with irresistible features for literary fans such as 'Become a literary master and write a diary', 'Chat with Osamu Dazai', and 'Write a report on a literary work'.
The Humanitext Project, led by Associate Professor Naoya Iwata of the Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences Research Promotion at Nagoya University, Associate Professor Kazutaka Tanaka of J. F. Oberlin University, and Assistant Professor Jun Ogawa of the University of Tokyo, has announced Humanitext Aozora, a conversational AI system based on a database of approximately 1,000 authors and 17,000 works from the Aozora Bunko library. The system responds to questions about works and authors with accurate citations, and users can converse with AI that immerses them in the role of famous authors and characters. We tested the system to see what it's like.
[Research News] 'Humanitext Aozora,' a search system that interacts with AI and modern Japanese literature, is now available | DHSS | Digital Humanities and Social Sciences Research Promotion Center
'By combining large-scale language models (LLMs) and search augmentation generation (RAG) technology, Humanitext Aozora offers researchers, students, and literature lovers a new way to engage with modern Japanese literature,' the project team said. Users can gain accurate knowledge about works, gain a deeper understanding of their content, and easily explore themes that span multiple works through natural dialogue.
At the time of writing, Humanitext Aozora can be used on the following pages:
Humanitext Aozora - Humanitext Aozora
https://aozora.humanitext.ai/
Humanitext Aozora offers four modes: a Q&A mode that prompts users for accurate answers and citations to questions about a text; a detailed commentary mode that analyzes multiple sources like a researcher and provides in-depth interpretations; a dialogue mode that allows users to converse with an AI that immerses itself in the role of a literary figure or character; and a creative mode that generates new texts by imitating the writing style and themes of a specified author. Users can also specify the number of contexts to retrieve and exclude specific authors from the results.
Large-scale language models (LLMs) can be selected from 'google/gemini-2.5-pro', 'openai/gpt-4.1', 'openai/o4-mini', and 'openai/o4-mini-high'.
Specifying the genre and author before entering information will narrow the AI's search range and provide a faster answer, but it is possible to use the app without specifying them.
This time, I actually tried out each of the four interaction modes.
◆Q&A mode
Set the output mode to 'Q&A'.
Enter 'Where is Kajii Motojiro's '
The answer I got was a bit unexpected: 'According to the text provided, the setting is in front of the foreign bookshelf at Maruzen.' Below the answer is a list of the literature on which the answer is based.
I asked him again, this time with a slightly different question, and he answered that the story is set in Teramachi-dori in Kyoto, on a street corner adjacent to Nijo-dori.
Clicking on a source will display the relevant passage below. Indeed, in 'Lemon,' we can see lines such as, 'Teramachi-dori is a bustling street—though it feels much clearer than Tokyo or Osaka,' and 'One side of the street is originally a corner bordering on the dark Nijo-dori.' Humanitext Aozora incorporates the works of Aozora Bunko as its data, so it's convenient for providing answers with references to related questions with a fairly high degree of accuracy.
◆Detailed commentary mode
Next, let's try using the 'detailed explanation mode.'
When I typed in, 'What is the common theme in Akutagawa Ryunosuke's later works?', I received a response that read like a report, based on criticism by authors such as Hori Tatsuo and Sakaguchi Ango.
Sources are listed at the end, and you can deepen your understanding by reading these documents included in Aozora Bunko for yourself.
◆Interactive mode
Next, select 'Dialogue Mode.' In this mode, you can freely converse with the AI, which has taken on the role of famous authors such as Natsume Soseki and Akutagawa Ryunosuke, as well as characters from their works.
」 English: Just to test it out, I asked him, 'You're Dazai Osamu. Which professional baseball team are you a fan of?' He replied, 'Baseball, huh? I don't know... I just don't have any connection with that sort of lively stuff. I know that people are passionate about it. I sometimes hear in the corner of a bar about what so-and-so did, or what hit did it. But it just doesn't resonate with me. It's like looking at a ready-made landscape painting, so perfectly put together that it ends up being boring. Besides, it's ridiculous for a guy like me to support a particular team. I'm sure that as soon as I start supporting a team, that team is bound to start losing. Nothing good ever comes of anything I'm involved with. So, I'm sorry, but I can't meet your expectations. My head is full of even more trivial, hopeless things. Yes, really...' and he gave me a rambling answer that was certainly typical of Dazai Osamu.
When I asked about Yukio Mishima, I got another vague answer. By having a conversation like this, I felt closer to this literary giant, who I tend to think of as a distant figure.
◆Creative Mode
Humanitext Aozora also allows you to specify the writing style and theme of the author you want to imitate and generate new text in that style.
As a test, we asked the software to 'write a sequel to Akutagawa Ryunosuke's Rashomon in the style of Izumi Kyoka.' The software then generated a fictional novel in Izumi Kyoka's beautiful style, depicting what happens to the servant after the story.
When I typed in 'Please write a story about Dazai Osamu and Nakahara Chuya getting into a fight at a bar,' the output was a story in which Nakahara Chuya tells Dazai Osamu, 'I just can't stand what you write. What's with that? It's effeminate, effeminate. It's like the ramblings of a geisha.'
Humanitext Aozora plans to move to a credit purchase system through an OpenRouter account in the future, but for the time being, it can be used without creating an account or being charged.
For the time being, all use is free. No login required, so please feel free to try it out.
— Humanitext (@humanitext_x) July 21, 2025
Related Posts:
in Review, Software, Web Service, Posted by log1h_ik