diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 1f13747dc..52ce06843 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -36,7 +36,8 @@ PACKAGES = [
     'spacy.fi',
     'spacy.bn',
     'spacy.he',
-    'spacy.nb',    
+    'spacy.nb',
+    'spacy.ja',
     'spacy.en.lemmatizer',
     'spacy.cli.converters',
     'spacy.language_data',
diff --git a/spacy/__init__.py b/spacy/__init__.py
index f71d3addd..f5912e13e 100644
--- a/spacy/__init__.py
+++ b/spacy/__init__.py
@@ -5,12 +5,12 @@ from . import util
 from .deprecated import resolve_model_name
 from .cli.info import info
 
-from . import en, de, zh, es, it, hu, fr, pt, nl, sv, fi, bn, he, nb
+from . import en, de, zh, es, it, hu, fr, pt, nl, sv, fi, bn, he, nb, ja
 
 
 _languages = (en.English, de.German, es.Spanish, pt.Portuguese, fr.French,
              it.Italian, hu.Hungarian, zh.Chinese, nl.Dutch, sv.Swedish,
-             fi.Finnish, bn.Bengali, he.Hebrew, nb.Norwegian)
+             fi.Finnish, bn.Bengali, he.Hebrew, nb.Norwegian, ja.Japanese)
 
 
 for _lang in _languages:
diff --git a/spacy/ja/__init__.py b/spacy/ja/__init__.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..07e40ada6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/spacy/ja/__init__.py
@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+# encoding: utf8
+from __future__ import unicode_literals, print_function
+
+from os import path
+
+from ..language import Language
+from ..attrs import LANG
+from ..tokens import Doc
+
+from .language_data import *
+
+
+class Japanese(Language):
+    lang = 'ja'
+
+    def make_doc(self, text):
+        try:
+            from janome.tokenizer import Tokenizer
+        except ImportError:
+            raise ImportError("The Japanese tokenizer requires the Janome library: "
+                              "https://github.com/mocobeta/janome")
+        words = [x.surface for x in Tokenizer().tokenize(text)]
+        return Doc(self.vocab, words=words, spaces=[False]*len(words))
diff --git a/spacy/ja/language_data.py b/spacy/ja/language_data.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..007ed2b4e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/spacy/ja/language_data.py
@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+# encoding: utf8
+from __future__ import unicode_literals
+
+
+# import base language data
+from .. import language_data as base
+
+
+# import util functions
+from ..language_data import update_exc, strings_to_exc
+
+
+# import language-specific data from files
+from .tag_map import TAG_MAP
+from .stop_words import STOP_WORDS
+
+
+TAG_MAP = dict(TAG_MAP)
+STOP_WORDS = set(STOP_WORDS)
+
+
+# export
+__all__ = ["TAG_MAP", "STOP_WORDS"]
diff --git a/spacy/ja/stop_words.py b/spacy/ja/stop_words.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..45bb7a4d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/spacy/ja/stop_words.py
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+# encoding: utf8
+from __future__ import unicode_literals
+
+
+# stop words as whitespace-separated list
+STOP_WORDS = set("""
+。
+、
+""".split())
diff --git a/spacy/ja/tag_map.py b/spacy/ja/tag_map.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f5b6b5040
--- /dev/null
+++ b/spacy/ja/tag_map.py
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+# encoding: utf8
+from __future__ import unicode_literals
+
+from ..symbols import *
+
+
+TAG_MAP = {
+    "ADV":      {POS: ADV},
+    "NOUN":     {POS: NOUN},
+    "ADP":      {POS: ADP},
+    "PRON":     {POS: PRON},
+    "SCONJ":    {POS: SCONJ},
+    "PROPN":    {POS: PROPN},
+    "DET":      {POS: DET},
+    "SYM":      {POS: SYM},
+    "INTJ":     {POS: INTJ},
+    "PUNCT":    {POS: PUNCT},
+    "NUM":      {POS: NUM},
+    "AUX":      {POS: AUX},
+    "X":        {POS: X},
+    "CONJ":     {POS: CONJ},
+    "ADJ":      {POS: ADJ},
+    "VERB":     {POS: VERB}
+}
diff --git a/website/docs/api/language-models.jade b/website/docs/api/language-models.jade
index a2ad9b9eb..40105b85c 100644
--- a/website/docs/api/language-models.jade
+++ b/website/docs/api/language-models.jade
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ p
     |  the existing language data and extending the tokenization patterns.
 
 +table([ "Language", "Source" ])
-    each language, code in { zh: "Chinese", es: "Spanish", it: "Italian", pt: "Portuguese", nl: "Dutch", sv: "Swedish", fi: "Finnish", nb: "Norwegian Bokmål", hu: "Hungarian", bn: "Bengali", he: "Hebrew" }
+    each language, code in { ja: "Japanese", zh: "Chinese", es: "Spanish", it: "Italian", pt: "Portuguese", nl: "Dutch", sv: "Swedish", fi: "Finnish", nb: "Norwegian Bokmål", hu: "Hungarian", bn: "Bengali", he: "Hebrew" }
         +row
             +cell #{language} #[code=code]
             +cell