Waka literature, one of the major genres of classical Japanese literature, is a verse form consisting of five phrases in a 5-7-5-7-7 moraic pattern.

Waka have often been handed down as anthologies, following the model of Kokin Wakashū established in the early 10th century. Waka anthologies normally include contextual information before and after each poem, for example, Kotobagaki (headnotes, explaining the context), Kadai (poetry themes), and authorship, according to standardized formats. In recent years, foundational research into structuring TEI-compliant text data for Waka literature based on these traditional formats has progressed, and several texts have been made publicly available.

However, there has been insufficient investigation into the markup of the vocabulary that forms the core of Waka expression. This specialized vocabulary, known as Utakotoba (Waka poetic vocabulary), is a crucial element that carries specific imagery and rhetorical functions within the linguistic space of Waka. In the commercial database currently used by many researchers, it is difficult to investigate the vocabulary based on the meaning, because search function of the database typically rely on simple keyword matching. Furthermore, dictionaries and indexes for Utakotoba are available only in print, with no free, open-access databases.

As a case study of how to solve these problems, this presentation proposes a TEI-compliant markup method for Utakotoba, using the Shōji Godo Hyakushu (The second of two anthologies of one hundred Waka poems compiled during the Shōji era in the early 13th century). Furthermore, with the aim of compiling a dictionary of Utakotoba linked directly to the Waka text, this proposes a method for structuring vocabulary entries and their contents as data in accordance with the TEI Guidelines by classifying the vocabularies based on meaning, assigning unique XML IDs.