We set out to investigate characteristics of research contents in the literature on palliative care between 1982 and 2017. We applied text mining to analyze trends in title terminology and then characterized articles in each implementation period of the Japanese government's cancer control strategy（CCS）. We targeted palliative care articles in the bibliographic database of the Japanese Medical Abstracts Society （online edition）. Our search yielded 3,342 articles. “1study” and “palliative care” represented the most frequently used terminology for the articles overall. From around the year 2000, “examination”, “nursing”, “patient” and “palliative care ward” became more frequently used. We identified emergent expressions for the CCS timeline as follows: “end-stage medical care” prior to CCS implementation, “hospice” with the Comprehensive 10-year Strategy for Cancer Control （1984-1993）; “pain” with the New 10-year Strategy to Overcome Cancer（1994-2003）; “palliative care team” and “family” with the 3rd-term Comprehensive 10-year Strategy for Cancer Control （2004-2013）; and “1study” and “home medical care” with the Comprehensive 10-year Strategy for Cancer Control （2014-2023）. The first authors of papers on palliative care were doctors at 40.93 ％ and nurses at 40.58 ％ . The main themes engaged with by nurses were “recognition,”“thought” and “relationship” of the patient. Research trends were found to be associated with the CCS implementation period, reflecting a shift from “therapy” to “quality of life,” “team medical care” and “home medical care” in title terminology from around the year 2007.