It takes the form of a counting song by including the sound of numbers in the lyrics, i.e., ichi, ni, san, shi, and so on (having the same sound as the Japanese words for one, two, three, and four, and so on) at the head of each verse.
イチ、ニ、サ、シ…と各句の頭に数字を読み込んだ数え歌の形をとっている。