“Katyusha no Uta” (カチューシャの唄), or “The Song of Katyusha”, written by Shimamura Hogetsu (島村抱月) and Soma Gyohu (相馬御風), sung by Sato Chiyako (佐藤千夜子) , is a play song of Hogetsu’s drama “Fukkatsu” or “Resurrection” (1914), and is known as the first Japanese popular song in modern days.

The words of “Katyusha no Uta”, as well as the words of many other popular songs in the Meiji and Taisho eras, are characterized by seven-and-five syllable meter. In this sense, a similar structure is found between the text of popular songs and the fixed form poetries in the Meiji and Taisho periods. On the other hand, the lyrics of "Katyusha no Uta" are decisively distinguished from fixed form poetry by the interjection "La-la" which has no function other than matching the lyrics to the melody.

In the field of study of Modern Japanese Literature, the lyrics of popular songs have not been paid enough attention. However, when focusing on the lyrics of popular songs, we should be able to find an important key to describing the history of Japanese poetry and prosody.

In this paper, I will analyze the text of “Katyusha no Uta”, in order to clarify the relationship between popular songs, poetries, and traditional seven-and-five syllable meter of the Japanese language.