Sakana AI Releases Karamaru, Edo-Period Classical Japanese Chatbot Trained on 25 Million Characters

Sakana AI · 39

Sakana AI released Karamaru, a chatbot trained on approximately 25 million characters from Edo-period Japanese texts that responds to modern Japanese questions in classical Edo-style language and worldview. The dataset was constructed through collaboration with academic projects including citizen-contributed transcription platform "Minna de Honkoku," AI-assisted optical character recognition of 1,001 Edo books, and human-transcribed classical texts from the National Institute of Japanese Literature. The chatbot enables users to engage with historical Japanese culture more accessibly, with applications in research, education, and cultural heritage preservation.