Aozora Bunko New Public-Domain Text Delta Feed

Stop refreshing a library's catalog page by hand — get told the moment a new public-domain Japanese text appears, full text included

Aozora Bunko keeps adding and revising public-domain Japanese texts on its own schedule, with no push notification when something new lands — so you either check back manually or build a scraper that re-pulls the whole catalog every run, most of which hasn't changed since the last time you looked. That wastes time and money re-downloading texts you already have, and it's easy to quietly miss a revision to a text you're already using. This Actor solves that: it watches Aozora Bunko's own official catalog export and emits an event only when a text is newly digitized (NEW_TEXT), revised (REVISED_TEXT), or changes status (STATUS_CHANGE) — with the full decoded text attached where available, so a new discovery lands in your feed ready to read, not just referenced.

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Why this outperforms a standard scraper

• Delta tracking, not re-scraping. Every record is fingerprinted on every run. Unchanged records are never re-delivered — and never billed.
• Pay only for what's new. A newly digitized or revised text delivered with its full decoded text costs $0.05. If Aozora Bunko only changes a text's status without new full text to go with it, that's just $0.01. Nothing else is billed.
• Public-domain confirmation built in. Aozora Bunko's catalog includes texts still under copyright review alongside its confirmed public-domain holdings; onlyConfirmedPublicDomain (on by default) keeps your feed limited to texts the library itself has already cleared, so you're not left cross-checking copyright status by hand before you use anything.

See it before you trust it

{
  "eventType": "NEW_TEXT",
  "title": "吾輩は猫である",
  "author": "夏目漱石",
  "isConfirmedPublicDomain": true,
  "fullText": "吾輩は猫である。名前はまだ無い。どこで生れたかとんと見当がつかぬ。...",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000148/files/789.html"
}

eventType tells you instantly whether this is a brand-new digitization or a revision to something you already have, and fullText means you're reading the work itself, not chasing down a second link to get it.

Zero-risk trial

Unchanged records cost $0.00. Run it once against real data before you commit to anything:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/K0XRDbUteacQL3jeF/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_API_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"onlyNew":true,"onlyConfirmedPublicDomain":true}'

import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/K0XRDbUteacQL3jeF/run-sync-get-dataset-items",
    params={"token": "<YOUR_API_TOKEN>"},
    json={"onlyNew": True, "onlyConfirmedPublicDomain": True},
)
records = response.json()
print(f"{len(records)} records returned")

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/K0XRDbUteacQL3jeF/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_API_TOKEN>",
  {
    method: "POST",
    headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
    body: JSON.stringify({ onlyNew: true, onlyConfirmedPublicDomain: true }),
  }
);
const records = await response.json();
console.log(records.length + " records returned");

Pricing

Event	What it means	Price
Full-Text Delivered	A newly digitized or revised confirmed-public-domain text, with full decoded text.	$0.05
Metadata-Only Change Summary	A status change without new full text.	$0.01

Actor-start fee: $0.00005/GB-memory (one-time per run, not per record).

What you get on every record

• A clear eventType of NEW_TEXT, REVISED_TEXT, or STATUS_CHANGE, so you always know why a text showed up in your feed
• Full-text events arrive with the complete decoded text attached — no separate fetch needed to actually read the work
• Every text checked against Aozora Bunko's own public-domain confirmation whenever onlyConfirmedPublicDomain is left on (the default)
• Only new-or-changed rows by default (onlyNew defaults to true) — no need to filter out the unchanged bulk of the catalog yourself

Input parameters

Field	Type	Description	Default
onlyNew	boolean	Only NEW_TEXT, REVISED_TEXT and STATUS_CHANGE rows are pushed.	true
onlyConfirmedPublicDomain	boolean	Restricts output to texts Aozora Bunko itself has confirmed as public domain.	true
resetState	boolean	Clears stored seen-work state so the next run re-baselines from scratch.	false

Source & reliability

This feed reads directly from Aozora Bunko's own official catalog export — the library's canonical record, not a scraped mirror — so titles, authorship, and public-domain status always match what Aozora Bunko itself publishes. A persistent seen-work state is what lets the delta engine tell a genuinely new digitization apart from a revision to a text you've already received; if that state ever needs a clean slate, resetState clears it and re-baselines the next run from scratch.