Recently I’ve been reading more novels rather than manga and I have noticed some versions within a novel have different kanji. Is there community knowledge of what version has the easiest to read kanji/non outdated? For instance when I was read 吾輩は猫である I found the kanji for 壱 which is really only used to signify that we are talking about money, but while reading a different version I found just the plan 「一」kanji instead of 壱.
So this mostly is only going to apply to older “classic” novels, and even then only the really popular stuff like 吾輩は猫である is going to be available in more than one edition as a print book. I think I would look on eg Amazon to see if multiple publishers have a version, and if they do then check the Amazon blurb or Google to see if there’s any info about differences. Versions aimed at younger readers are more likely to have more kanji simplification choices. Versions for adult readers tend to have a standard set of updates to modern kanji forms, modern kana spellings, and a handful of changes of grammar-function words from kanji to kana.
If you want the full 歴史的仮名遣い experience as originally published (but without the original furigana, sadly) you can find that on Aozora…
Gotta love that わざ/\.
The つく/″\ is good too – it’s like a little Mt Fuji in the middle of the sentence
Different book, but I also love 毎日々々.
The National Diet Library has an online digital copy of an early publication of the book, though the scan quality is not great. They also have digital versions of the original Hototogisu magazine issues it ran in, but annoyingly only for registered users, and you have to live in Japan to be able to register…