| Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 1-24 |
| Abbreviation: APJCR |
| e-ISSN: 2733-8096 |
| Publication date: 31 August 2025 |
| Received: 14 May 2025 / Received in Revised Form: 5 August 2025 / Accepted: 17 August 2025 |
| DOI: https://doi.org/10.22925/apjcr.2025.6.1.1
|
From imagery to intimacy: Semantic and sentimental change in Japanese enka lyrics |
| Kevin Heffernan (Kwansei Gakuin University), JAPAN |
| Copyright 2025 APJCR This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Abstract |
| This study investigates long-term cultural change in Japan by analyzing emotional shifts in enka song lyrics from 1945 to 2020. Using a corpus of 2,500 songs, I tested two hypotheses: (1) that lyrics have become more emotionally negative and intense over time, and (2) that expressions of mixed emotions within songs have declined. In Study 1, I applied the NRC-VAD lexicon to measure valence, arousal, and dominance in common nouns. Results show flat valence scores but significant increases in arousal and dominance, suggesting that lyrics have become more emotionally intense but not more negative over time. In Study 2, a large language model assigned sentiment scores to over 43,000 lyric chunks. Contrary to expectations, average sentiment became more positive, and mixed emotions remained stable. These findings suggest that emotional ambivalence remains culturally accepted, even as emotional expression becomes more intense. Peaks and dips in sentiment scores align with periods of national unrest, suggesting that lyrics are sensitive to shifting social conditions. I conclude by highlighting parallels with research on language change, suggesting that both linguistic and cultural shifts may be driven by similar top-down and bottom-up processes. |
Keywords |
| Japanese, Enka Music, Lyrics, Sentiment, Diachronic Change |
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The Authors |
| Kevin Heffernan is a Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University. He has written many articles about the Japanese language on a wide range of topics, such as local identity, language contact, language change, the formation of irregular forms, vernacular Japanese, and cognitive processing. He has published two textbooks about linguistics. |
The Authors’ Addresses |
| First and Corresponding Author Kevin Heffernan Professor Kwansei Gakuin University 1 Gakuen-Uegahara, Sanda, JAPAN E-mail: kevin@kwansei.ac.jp  |
