Four kinds of source actually carry raw, legal Japanese manga: the publishers' own free reading apps, paid digital stores like BOOK WALKER and Renta!, the Japanese Kindle store, and physical importers like CDJapan. All four exist. Not all four work the same way once your billing address isn't in Japan.
That gap is where most "where to read raw manga" lists fall short. They name BOOK WALKER, eBookJapan and Shonen Jump+ in the same breath, as if signing up from abroad were identical across all three. It isn't. One of them still works exactly as advertised. One of them now asks for a Japanese phone number before it will even let you register. Below is what each source actually does when the account creating it isn't Japanese, checked against each platform's own support pages.
The official sources, and what "works from abroad" really means
| Source | What you get | From outside Japan | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| BOOK WALKER (Japan Store) | Buy the Japanese-language ebook, keep it forever | Works as built | Free account, no VPN needed; takes foreign credit cards, debit cards and PayPal by BOOK WALKER's own account |
| Renta! | Rent or buy single chapters, cheap way to sample a series | Works, with conditions | Your card must allow international charges; PayPal settles in yen, not your home currency |
| Amazon.co.jp Kindle Store | Permanent purchase, the biggest raw catalogue there is | Works, then slows down | Needs a dummy Japanese address and a card set to Kindle Payment Settings; buy steadily from abroad and Amazon eventually throttles the account and asks you to return to Japan |
| eBookJapan | Huge backlist, was the overseas favourite for years | No longer reliable | Since folding into Yahoo! Bookstore, new accounts require a Japanese phone number, which most readers abroad don't have |
| Shonen Jump+ (browser) | Free, same day as Japan, publisher's own site | Browser works, app doesn't | The native app is Japan App Store only; Shueisha's own overseas answer is Manga Plus, which is translated, not raw |
| CDJapan (physical) | Real printed volumes, shipped to your door | Built for it | Slower and pricier than digital, no account gymnastics, no region check at all |
Two of those rows are the quiet trap. eBookJapan spent years as the go to recommendation for overseas readers, and a lot of older guides still send people there. The Japanese phone number requirement is recent enough that plenty of listicles haven't caught up to it. And Kindle's soft cap on overseas buying rarely shows up until someone has already built a library there and hit it.
Free and legal, if a browser tab is enough
Skip the apps entirely and Shueisha's own site, shonenjumpplus.com, works from a regular browser almost anywhere, no account required for the free chapters. It just won't feel like an app: no offline shelf, no push notification when a new chapter drops. Kodansha runs the same kind of site for Magazine Pocket titles and Shogakukan for Sunday Webry, though both have been reported as less consistent for readers outside Japan than Shueisha's, so browser first, native app second is the safer order to try any of them in. Kadokawa's Comic Walker and the independent GANMA! tend to be the least fussy of the bunch about where the reader is connecting from, though neither carries the volume of current, big-name serialisation that Shonen Jump+ does.
None of this touches Manga Plus, Comic Walker Global, or any of the other "overseas" storefronts publishers run. Those exist specifically because the raw Japanese versions above are awkward to reach from abroad, and they serve translated chapters instead. Worth knowing so you don't spend twenty minutes hunting for a Japanese-language section that was never going to be there.
Physical still beats digital for some readers
CDJapan ships original tankobon volumes internationally with no region check, no dummy address, no phone number field to stare at. It costs more once shipping is added and takes days instead of seconds. But it sidesteps every account problem above in one move, and a shelf of real volumes is still the only format a platform can't revoke later. For a series you already know you'll reread, that trade is often worth it.
Finding the raw is only step one
Getting the page solves half the problem. The other half is that it's still in Japanese, hand lettered inside speech bubbles that a normal translator wasn't built to handle. That's the part covered in how to read raw manga in English: import the page, tap a bubble, and the Japanese is replaced with English sized to the same space, background intact. The mechanics of doing that well, including vertical webtoon strips, are in how to translate manga to English, and Yomi's manga translator is built specifically for that step rather than bolted on from a general camera app.
One honest note before you commit to any of this: buying from BOOK WALKER, Renta! or Kindle only pays the creator if the series is actually licensed for sale there. Plenty of manga simply isn't, which is a separate, measurable problem we looked at in how much manga never gets an English release. Reading the raw is legitimate. Reading it doesn't change who gets paid for it, so where a purchase option exists, take it.
Try it before you commit to a source
None of the sources above need testing with a series you're attached to. Yomi ships a free library of public domain and openly licensed comics that behave exactly like a paid raw once imported: same vertical bubbles, same hand lettering. Import a page, tap a bubble, read the English where the Japanese was. If the reading experience holds up there, it'll hold up on whatever you end up buying from BOOK WALKER or CDJapan next.