diff --git a/.circleci/config.yml b/.circleci/config.yml
index ef84380ea51..56a2d91cce7 100644
--- a/.circleci/config.yml
+++ b/.circleci/config.yml
@@ -150,6 +150,7 @@ jobs:
                       - v0.3-{{ checksum "setup.py" }}
             - run: pip install --upgrade pip
             - run: pip install .[ja,testing]
+            - run: python -m unidic download
             - save_cache:
                   key: v0.3-custom_tokenizers-{{ checksum "setup.py" }}
                   paths:
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 206c3e35409..5f85db9c282 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ if stale_egg_info.exists():
 
 extras = {}
 
-extras["ja"] = ["fugashi>=1.0", "ipadic>=1.0,<2.0"]
+extras["ja"] = ["fugashi>=1.0", "ipadic>=1.0.0,<2.0", "unidic_lite>=1.0.7", "unidic>=1.0.2"]
 extras["sklearn"] = ["scikit-learn"]
 
 # keras2onnx and onnxconverter-common version is specific through a commit until 1.7.0 lands on pypi
diff --git a/src/transformers/tokenization_bert_japanese.py b/src/transformers/tokenization_bert_japanese.py
index c3ede2c47e5..e476f463d48 100644
--- a/src/transformers/tokenization_bert_japanese.py
+++ b/src/transformers/tokenization_bert_japanese.py
@@ -167,30 +167,89 @@ class BertJapaneseTokenizer(BertTokenizer):
 class MecabTokenizer:
     """Runs basic tokenization with MeCab morphological parser."""
 
-    def __init__(self, do_lower_case=False, never_split=None, normalize_text=True, mecab_option: Optional[str] = None):
+    def __init__(
+        self,
+        do_lower_case=False,
+        never_split=None,
+        normalize_text=True,
+        mecab_dic: Optional[str] = "ipadic",
+        mecab_option: Optional[str] = None,
+    ):
         """Constructs a MecabTokenizer.
 
         Args:
             **do_lower_case**: (`optional`) boolean (default True)
-                Whether to lower case the input.
+                Whether to lowercase the input.
             **never_split**: (`optional`) list of str
                 Kept for backward compatibility purposes.
                 Now implemented directly at the base class level (see :func:`PreTrainedTokenizer.tokenize`)
-                List of token not to split.
+                List of tokens not to split.
             **normalize_text**: (`optional`) boolean (default True)
                 Whether to apply unicode normalization to text before tokenization.
-            **mecab_option**: (`optional`) string passed to `MeCab.Tagger` constructor (default "")
+            **mecab_dic**: (`optional`) string (default "ipadic")
+                Name of dictionary to be used for MeCab initialization.
+                If you are using a system-installed dictionary, set thi option to `None` and modify `mecab_option`.
+            **mecab_option**: (`optional`) string
+                String passed to MeCab constructor.
         """
         self.do_lower_case = do_lower_case
         self.never_split = never_split if never_split is not None else []
         self.normalize_text = normalize_text
 
-        import fugashi
-        import ipadic
+        try:
+            import fugashi
+        except ModuleNotFoundError as error:
+            raise error(
+                "You need to install fugashi to use MecabTokenizer."
+                "See https://pypi.org/project/fugashi/ for installation."
+            )
 
-        # Use ipadic by default (later options can override it)
         mecab_option = mecab_option or ""
-        mecab_option = ipadic.MECAB_ARGS + " " + mecab_option
+
+        if mecab_dic is not None:
+            if mecab_dic == "ipadic":
+                try:
+                    import ipadic
+                except ModuleNotFoundError as error:
+                    raise error(
+                        "The ipadic dictionary is not installed. "
+                        "See https://github.com/polm/ipadic-py for installation."
+                    )
+
+                dic_dir = ipadic.DICDIR
+
+            elif mecab_dic == "unidic_lite":
+                try:
+                    import unidic_lite
+                except ModuleNotFoundError as error:
+                    raise error(
+                        "The unidic_lite dictionary is not installed. "
+                        "See https://github.com/polm/unidic-lite for installation."
+                    )
+
+                dic_dir = unidic_lite.DICDIR
+
+            elif mecab_dic == "unidic":
+                try:
+                    import unidic
+                except ModuleNotFoundError as error:
+                    raise error(
+                        "The unidic dictionary is not installed. "
+                        "See https://github.com/polm/unidic-py for installation."
+                    )
+
+                dic_dir = unidic.DICDIR
+                if not os.path.isdir(dic_dir):
+                    raise RuntimeError(
+                        "The unidic dictionary itself is not found."
+                        "See https://github.com/polm/unidic-py for installation."
+                    )
+
+            else:
+                raise ValueError("Invalid mecab_dic is specified.")
+
+            mecabrc = os.path.join(dic_dir, "mecabrc")
+            mecab_option = "-d {} -r {} ".format(dic_dir, mecabrc) + mecab_option
 
         self.mecab = fugashi.GenericTagger(mecab_option)
 
@@ -213,7 +272,7 @@ class MecabTokenizer:
         return tokens
 
 
-class CharacterTokenizer(object):
+class CharacterTokenizer:
     """Runs Character tokenziation."""
 
     def __init__(self, vocab, unk_token, normalize_text=True):
@@ -247,7 +306,7 @@ class CharacterTokenizer(object):
             text = unicodedata.normalize("NFKC", text)
 
         output_tokens = []
-        for i, char in enumerate(text):
+        for char in text:
             if char not in self.vocab:
                 output_tokens.append(self.unk_token)
                 continue
diff --git a/tests/test_tokenization_bert_japanese.py b/tests/test_tokenization_bert_japanese.py
index 03ff26e3a05..b14f19f9ada 100644
--- a/tests/test_tokenization_bert_japanese.py
+++ b/tests/test_tokenization_bert_japanese.py
@@ -87,16 +87,38 @@ class BertJapaneseTokenizationTest(TokenizerTesterMixin, unittest.TestCase):
         self.assertListEqual(tokens, ["こんにちは", "、", "世界", "。", "こん", "##ばんは", "、", "世界", "。"])
         self.assertListEqual(tokenizer.convert_tokens_to_ids(tokens), [3, 12, 10, 14, 4, 9, 12, 10, 14])
 
-    def test_mecab_tokenizer(self):
-        tokenizer = MecabTokenizer()
+    def test_mecab_tokenizer_ipadic(self):
+        tokenizer = MecabTokenizer(mecab_dic="ipadic")
 
         self.assertListEqual(
             tokenizer.tokenize(" \tｱｯﾌﾟﾙストアでiPhone８ が  \n 発売された　。  "),
             ["アップルストア", "で", "iPhone", "8", "が", "発売", "さ", "れ", "た", "。"],
         )
 
+    def test_mecab_tokenizer_unidic_lite(self):
+        try:
+            tokenizer = MecabTokenizer(mecab_dic="unidic_lite")
+        except ModuleNotFoundError:
+            return
+
+        self.assertListEqual(
+            tokenizer.tokenize(" \tｱｯﾌﾟﾙストアでiPhone８ が  \n 発売された　。  "),
+            ["アップル", "ストア", "で", "iPhone", "8", "が", "発売", "さ", "れ", "た", "。"],
+        )
+
+    def test_mecab_tokenizer_unidic(self):
+        try:
+            tokenizer = MecabTokenizer(mecab_dic="unidic")
+        except ModuleNotFoundError:
+            return
+
+        self.assertListEqual(
+            tokenizer.tokenize(" \tｱｯﾌﾟﾙストアでiPhone８ が  \n 発売された　。  "),
+            ["アップル", "ストア", "で", "iPhone", "8", "が", "発売", "さ", "れ", "た", "。"],
+        )
+
     def test_mecab_tokenizer_lower(self):
-        tokenizer = MecabTokenizer(do_lower_case=True)
+        tokenizer = MecabTokenizer(do_lower_case=True, mecab_dic="ipadic")
 
         self.assertListEqual(
             tokenizer.tokenize(" \tｱｯﾌﾟﾙストアでiPhone８ が  \n 発売された　。  "),
@@ -118,7 +140,7 @@ class BertJapaneseTokenizationTest(TokenizerTesterMixin, unittest.TestCase):
         )
 
     def test_mecab_tokenizer_no_normalize(self):
-        tokenizer = MecabTokenizer(normalize_text=False)
+        tokenizer = MecabTokenizer(normalize_text=False, mecab_dic="ipadic")
 
         self.assertListEqual(
             tokenizer.tokenize(" \tｱｯﾌﾟﾙストアでiPhone８ が  \n 発売された　。  "),