Morality in Japanese Lyrics

A Text Analysis Based on Moral Foundations Theory

Abstract

Popular songs change with the time and the time changes with popular songs, a proverb says. Hit songs therefore tend to reflect the state of people’s morality that exists when they are written. With the Moral Foundations Dictionary, we quantified morality in Japanese lyrics from musicians who ranked in the Oricon hit chart between 2004 and 2016. The results show that Japanese hit songs include many words related to “harm” and “purity.” In addition, we found a positive correlation in the usage of morality- and immorality-related words.