本稿は、日本近代児童文学を確立．発展させた媒体として知られる雑誌『赤い鳥』(大正7[1918]~昭和11(1936]年刊行)を取り上げ登場人物に焦点を当て、言語学のアプローチからその特徴を浮き彫りにし日本昔話語彙の特徴を考えてみる。結果は、以下の3点を日本昔話語彙の特徴として浮き彫りにしたことが指摘できる。i日本とかかわっている「宇喜田直家」といった「歴史文化人物」語群の出現に意味があり、「フランクリン夫人」、「アボット艦長」などといった外国人の名前が見られない。ii「1.2030神仏．精霊」語群は、童話語彙よりバラエティに富んでおり、女神ヴィーナス、メシアといった西洋のキャラクタが見られない。iii「人物」、「專門．技術的職業」「社会階層関係」などの分野においては、「冒険家」、「賢者」といった西洋や現代にかかわる表現が見られない。全体としては、昔話における登場人物に関する表現は、日本の昔の庶民の生活習慣を反映するものが多い。それに対し、童話は、近現代の西洋生活文化に関する表現が散見される点で対蹠的である。｜This study accessed fairy tales published by well-known Japanese authors of children's literature in the landmark magazine ＂Akai Tori＂（“赤鳥”）. The lexical items used for the descriptions of figures tend to sketch the specificities of Japanese vocabulary in Japanese folktales, which is distinctive from that in Japanese fairy tales. After gathering data from 188 articles and a total of around three thousand words, the following characteristics were found. i. There were many names of historical Japanese characters, the most of which were famous during the time, in folktales; but there were some names of foreigners, which appeared regularly in common fairy tales. ii. The main feature of folktales is that the vocabulary related to spirit of God and Buddha was broadly used, compared to that used in common fairy tales. Additionally, vocabulary associated with non-Japanese God and Buddha vocabulary was rarely seen in folktales. iii. The words, which were correlated to the figures, professions, technical careers, races, social classes, military affairs n folktales showed seldom western or modern concepts that were commonly found in fairy tales. Taken together, the cultural background shown in the folktales tends to exhibit the early lifestyle of Japanese civilians. In contrast, fairy tales include more worldwide concepts and relatively modern background