An optical receiving apparatus includes: an A/D converting circuit; a received-signal demodulating circuit that demodulates a received digital signal from the A/D converting circuit into an m-bit received signal; a soft-decision-data generating circuit that generates n-bit (n≦m) soft-decision data based on the m-bit received signal; and an error correcting circuit that performs error correction based on the n-bit soft-decision data and outputs an error-corrected received signal. The soft-decision-data generating circuit generates soft-decision data of n bits (n=p+1) that corresponds to a determination result according to 2n−1 soft-decision thresholds, by using an MSB of the m-bit received signal as hard-decision data, and by using, as reliability information, a result of comparison between a plurality of bits (k bits, where k≦m) on an MSB side of the m-bit received signal and a fixed threshold, or p bits (p≦m−k) selected from (m−k) bits on an LSB side of the m-bit received signal.