Dr. Kento Watanabe's Home Page

• March 2013, B.E. from Department of Information and Intelligent Systems, Tohoku University
• Match 2015, M.S. from Department of System Information Sciences, Tohoku University
• Match 2018, Ph.D. from Department of System Information Sciences, Tohoku University

• The Association for Natural Language Processing (Japan) (Website)
• Information Processing Society of Japan (Website)

• October 2014 - Feburary 2015, Japan Science and Technology Agency PRESTO, Administrative Assistant
• December 2014 - March 2016, Doctoral Program for World-leading Innovative & Smart Education, Junior Research Assistant
• April 2016 - March 2018, Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, Teaching Assistant
• April 2016 - March 2018, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Research Fellowship for Young Scientists (DC2)
• April 2018 - September 2023, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Researcher
• October 2023 - onward, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Senior Researcher

・Lyrics Information Processing
I am interested in Natural Language Processing (NLP), especially my research focus is lyrics information processing. This is a new research area in which natural language processing, music information processing and intelligent interface are fused. Once a reasonably sophisticated computational model of lyrics is obtained, the model will provide us a better understanding of the nature and structure of lyrics, which will then allow us to consider building computer systems which can enhance the creativity of human lyrics writers.

・Keywords
Lyrics Information Processing, Natural Language Processing, Music Information Retrieval, Intelligent Interface, Artificial Intelligence.

1. Journal Papers

1. Kento Watanabe and Masataka Goto: A Text-to-Lyrics Generation Method Leveraging Image-based Semantics and Reducing Plagiarism Risk, IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, Vol.107.D, No.12, pp.1–11, December 2024.
2. Ryota Mibayashi, Takehiro Yamamoto, Kosetsu Tsukuda, Kento Watanabe, Tomoyasu Nakano, Masataka Goto, and Hiroaki Ohshima: Response Verse Generation from Reverse Direction Including Rhymes in Rap Battles, IPSJ Transactions on Databases (TOD) Vol.17, No.2, pp.28–39, April 2024.
3. Kento Watanabe and Masataka Goto: A Method to Detect Chorus Sections in Lyrics Text, IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, Vol.E106.D, No.9, pp1600–1609, September 2023.
4. Hiromu Yakura, Kento Watanabe, and Masataka Goto: Self-Supervised Contrastive Learning for Singing Voices, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, Vol.30, pp.1614–1623, 2022.
5. Takayuki Nakatsuka, Kento Watanabe, Yuki Koyama, Masahiro Hamasaki, Masataka Goto, and Shigeo Morishima: Vocal-Accompaniment Compatibility Estimation Using Self-Supervised and Joint-Embedding Techniques, IEEE Access, Vol.9, pp.101994–102003, 2021.
6. Kento Watanabe, Yuichiroh Matsubayashi, Kentaro Inui, Satoru Fukayama, Tomoyasu Nakano, and Masataka Goto: Modeling Storylines in Lyrics, IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, Vol.E101.D, No.4, pp1167–1179, April 2018.
7. Keita Nabeshima, Kento Watanabe, Junta Mizuno, Naoaki Okazaki, and Kentaro Inui: Extracting False Information on Twitter and Analyzing its Diffusion Processes by using Linguistic Patterns for Correction (in Japanese), Journal of Natural Language Processing Vol.13, No.2, pp.461–484, June 2013.

2. International Conference and Workshop

1. Kento Watanabe and Masataka Goto: A Data-Driven Method for Analyzing and Quantifying Lyrics-Dance Motion Relationships, In Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, (NAACL-HLT 2025), pp.7901–7916, April 2025.
2. Osamu Take, Kento Watanabe, Takayuki Nakatsuka, Tian Cheng, Tomoyasu Nakano, Masataka Goto, Shinnosuke Takamichi, and Hiroshi Saruwatari: Audio Effect Chain Estimation and Dry Signal Recovery from Multi-Effect-Processed Musical Signals, In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx24), September 2024.
3. Kento Watanabe and Masataka Goto: Text-to-lyrics generation with image-based semantics and reduced risk of plagiarism, In Proceedings of the 24th annual conference of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR 2023), November 2023.
4. Haven Kim, Kento Watanabe, Masataka Goto, and Juhan Nam: A Computational Evaluation Framework for Singable Lyric Translation, In Proceedings of the 24th annual conference of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR 2023), November 2023.
5. Ryota Mibayashi, Takehiro Yamamoto, Kosetsu Tsukuda, Kento Watanabe, Tomoyasu Nakano, Masataka Goto, and Hiroaki Ohshima: Verse Generation by Reverse Generation Considering Rhyme and Answer in Japanese Rap Battles, In Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR 2023), November 2023.
6. Kento Watanabe and Masataka Goto: Atypical Lyrics Completion Considering Musical Audio Signals, In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Multimedia Modeling (MMM 2021), pp.174–186, January 2021.
7. Kento Watanabe and Masataka Goto: Lyrics Information Processing: Analysis, Generation, and Applications, In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on NLP for Music and Audio (NLP4MusA), pp.6–11, October 2020.
8. Kento Watanabe and Masataka Goto: A Chorus-Section Detection Method for Lyrics Text, In Proceedings of the 21st annual conference of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR 2020), pp.351–359, October 2020.
9. Kento Watanabe, Masataka Goto: Query-by-Blending: A Music Exploration System Blending Latent Vector Representations of Lyric Word, Song Audio, and Artist, In Proceedings of the 20th annual conference of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR 2019), pp.144–151, November 2019.
10. Reina Akama, Kento Watanabe, Sho Yokoi, Sosuke Kobayashi, and Kentaro Inui: Unsupervised Learning of Style-sensitive Word Vectors, In Proceedings of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2018), pp.572–578, July 2018.
11. Kento Watanabe, Yuichiroh Matsubayashi, Satoru Fukayama, Masataka Goto, Kentaro Inui and Tomoyasu Nakano: A Melody-conditioned Lyrics Language Model, In Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL-HLT 2018), pp.163–172, June 2018.
12. Kento Watanabe, Yuichiroh Matsubayashi, Kentaro Inui, Tomoyasu Nakano, Satoru Fukayama, and Masataka Goto: LyriSys: An Interactive Support System for Writing Lyrics Based on Topic Transition, In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Intelligent User Interfaces Community (ACM IUI 2017), pp.559—563, March 2017.
13. Kento Watanabe, Yuichiroh Matsubayashi, Naho Orita, Naoaki Okazaki, Kentaro Inui, Satoru Fukayama, Tomoyasu Nakano, Jordan B. L. Smith, and Masataka Goto: Modeling Discourse Segments in Lyrics Using Repeated Patterns, In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2016), PP.1959—1969, December 2016.
14. Kento Watanabe, Yuichiroh Matsubayashi, Kentaro Inui, and Masataka Goto: Modeling Structural Topic Transitions for Automatic Lyrics Generation, In Proceedings of the 28th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computing (PACLIC 2014), pp.422—431, December 2014.
15. Naoaki Okazaki, Keita Nabeshima, Kento Watanabe, Junta Mizuno, and Kentaro Inui: Extracting and Aggregating False Information from Microblogs, In Proceedings of the Workshop on Language Processing and Crisis Information 2013 (LPCI 2013), pp.36–43, October 2013.

3. Invited Talks and Tutorials

1. November 2024: ISMIR2024 Tutorial: "Lyrics and Singing Voice Processing in Music Information Retrieval: Analysis, Alignment, Transcription, and Applications" Overview Page
2. December 2023: SIG-NL(IPSJ), Invited Talk: "Lyric Information Processing: Past, Present, and Future"
3. March 2023: IPSJ-ONE: "Computers that Understand and Support Lyric Composition" Overview Page / Video Page
4. August 2022: The 17th NLP Young Researchers Symposium (YANS), Invited Session: "Establishing a New Field: Lyrics Information Processing" Overview Page
5. March 2021: The 27th Annual Meeting of the Association for Natural Language Processing (ANLP), Workshop: "Considering the New Normal for Young Researchers’ Networking" Overview Page
6. May 2021: Lecture at Miyano Laboratory, The University of Tokyo: "Lyrics Information Processing: Analysis, Generation, and Applications"
7. September 2020: Lecture at Okazaki Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology: "Lyrics Information Processing: Analysis, Generation, and Applications"
8. July 2019: Lecture at Okumura Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology: "The Present and Future of Lyrics Information Processing"
9. March 2014: The 20th Annual Meeting of the Association for Natural Language Processing (ANLP), Invited Paper Presentation: "Collecting and Analyzing the Diffusion of Misinformation Based on Correction Patterns"