Warabe uta (children's songs), the foundation of traditional Japanese music, comprises melodies that are spontaneously created by children during play; douyou (nursery rhymes) is also a similar music genre. Although both genres are associated with children, douyou is different from warabe uta as these melodies are composed by adults with the explicit intention of attracting children. In this study, we define “childhood” as the childlike feature of warabe uta naturally created by children. Information on pitch interval and note length was extracted from melodies of warabe uta, douyou, and popular Japanese songs of the same era; these features were used to perform statistical comparisons. Thus, by examining the features that elucidate the commonalities and differences among the music genres, this study clarifies the “childhood” hidden in douyou melodies.

This paper describes an efficient encoding model using a TEI-based schema for the earlier Japanese dictionaries (–1615), namely Heian-era Chinese character dictionaries. Structural annotation allow us to mediate the structural invisibility in earlier dictionaries that hinders the wider use of those materials. Moreover, encoding these materials in a uniform model will clarify their structural differences. The schema, TEI (Text Encoding Initiative), is a globally accepted text-encoding convention that encompasses a variety of encoding ideas, including those for dictionaries and lexical databases. There has been little literature on the application of TEI to traditional East Asian dictionaries, whose encoding raises a number of considerations. This paper establishes a method of efficient encoding of the characteristic elements of earlier dictionaries.