Music Data Analysis
Jitterin’ Jinn “Natsumatsuri”: Analyzing 500 YouTube Comments with Data
About Jitterin’ Jinn and “Natsumatsuri”
Released on August 29, 1990, “Natsumatsuri” was Jitterin’ Jinn’s 4th single, written and composed by Jinta Haya and sung by Reiko Harukawa. The band had appeared on the popular audition show Ikasu Band Tengoku (“Ika-Ten”) the year before, in 1989, where they won the title of 6th-generation King. In 2000, a cover by the girl band Whiteberry became a huge hit in its own right and even appeared on NHK’s Kohaku Uta Gassen, Japan’s biggest New Year’s Eve music special. To this day, every summer, people still debate which version is playing.
This time, we actually collected and analyzed the comment section of the official music video as data. What do you see when you look at numbers instead of impressions? This is a record of running 500 comments through an analysis tool — written not by a music expert, but by someone who runs a rental piano studio and builds LINE official accounts and internal tools on the side.
What the Comments Show, in Data
Theme breakdown
Here’s how the 500 comments broke down.
| Theme | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Debate: the original (Jitterin’ Jinn) vs. the Whiteberry cover | 132 | 26% |
| Simple “I love this” comments | 55 | 11% |
| Cross-generational & cross-border connection | 10 | 2% |
| Mentions of the answer song, written in hiragana as “natsumatsuri” | 8 | 2% |
| Resonance with the gentle, life-affirming lyrics | 7 | 1% |
| A comfort in hard times | 5 | 1% |
| Beauty of the MV & outfits / baseball-cheer memories, etc. | 9 | 2% |
| Other | 272 | 54% |
By raw count, “Other” comes out on top at 54%. But the next-largest chunk is the interesting part: a full 26% of all comments — more than one in four — argue over whether this is JITTERIN’JINN’s original or Whiteberry’s cover. Even the single most-liked comment on the video wasn’t about the song’s meaning or memories — it was about this exact debate.
“I’m firmly Team JITTERIN’JINN on this one.” (@小さな巨人-k7g, 5,813 likes)
The second most-liked comment made the same point:
“Whenever this gets introduced as ‘Whiteberry’s Natsumatsuri,’ my mom always adds, ‘It was originally Jitterin’ Jinn, though.'” (@ymm9879, 1,780 likes)
What Fans Are Actually Talking About
Comments that actually engage with the lyrics — their gentleness, how they resonate with life, or finding comfort in them during hard times — add up to less than one in ten of all comments, even combined. The real center of conversation around this song isn’t how to interpret the lyrics. It’s a debate over authorship: whose song is this, really?
The Story Behind “Natsumatsuri”
There’s a lesser-known story behind this song. It wasn’t originally conceived as a standalone piece — it was written as one half of a pair, alongside a companion song told from the girl’s point of view. That companion song shares the same title, but written in hiragana instead of kanji: “natsumatsuri.” Because “Natsumatsuri” became a far bigger hit than anyone expected, its companion song was shelved for 20 years. It finally saw the light of day in 2010, released as an answer song with a music video by manga artist Taiyo Matsumoto.
Where “Natsumatsuri” tells the regret of a boy who couldn’t confess his feelings, the answer song tells what the girl beside him was feeling that same night. Read together, the two songs reveal that both of them were thinking of each other, each too afraid of ruining what they had to say anything — a quiet, mutual near-miss.
What the Data Tells Us
In other words, what the songwriter really wanted to convey wasn’t something “Natsumatsuri” completes on its own — it was the subtlety of a love that only comes together 20 years later. And yet, looking at this comment analysis, only 8 comments — just 2% of the total — even mention the answer song’s existence. For most listeners, this song isn’t first and foremost a bittersweet love story; it has become a song about which “side” you’re on, confirming which version you grew up with. There may be a small gap between the depth of the story the creators spent 20 years completing, and what listeners are actually excited about.
Finally
I’m actually part of the generation that watched Ika-Ten live as a teenager, and I still remember the episode where Jitterin’ Jinn won the King title. It’s one of the songs I sang plenty of times at karaoke, too. A song from 1990, a cover in 2000, an answer song in 2010, and now a full music video release in 2026 — “Natsumatsuri” has kept changing shape, little by little, for more than 30 years, and seeing this data made me appreciate that all over again. If anything, the fact that people still argue about “which one’s the original” is proof of just how much this song is loved across generations, which, when you think about it, is kind of heartwarming.
Which version came to mind when you read “Natsumatsuri”?
If you’re interested in this kind of comment analysis or data work itself, please get in touch below.
Source: JITTERIN’JINN official YouTube channel / Nippon Columbia official news (announced August 24, 2010) / CDJournal, “Jitterin’ Jinn Announces ‘Natsumatsuri,’ the Companion Song to ‘Natsumatsuri'” / Middle Edge, “The Truth Behind Jitterin’ Jinn’s Classic ‘Natsumatsuri,’ Revealed 20 Years Later” / music blog “Ongaku-zuki no Ima no Hanashi to Mukashi no Hanashi” (published July 24, 2026).