If you want type safety, you need to parse your JSON into a java class (although "days" is definitely an exaggeration with the right tools—I'm a fan of json-sch

If you want type safety, you need to parse your JSON into a java class (although "days" is definitely an exaggeration with the right tools—I'm a fan of json-schemas and jsonschema2pojo [0]). But of course you don't get type safety in python, so it's bit of an apples and oranges comparison. If you're willing to settle for no type safety, there are untyped Java APIs like Jackson's tree API [1] that are, while definitely more verbose than Python's, similarly productive in my experience—and much, much faster. [0] http://www.jsonschema2pojo.org/ http://www.jsonschema2pojo.org/ [1] http://wiki.fasterxml.com/JacksonTreeModel http://wiki.fasterxml.com/JacksonTreeModel