This little
eighth note (or
quaver, for you Commonwealth types out there), found at
Unicode hex 266A, is a commonly-used typographical character in
Japanese. When you come across it in a text, it indicates that the following phrase is sung. For instance:
九ちゃんが歌い始まった。♪「うえをむーうーいて…」
Kyu-chan began to sing. "Ue o mu-u-ite..."
Originally, a character called the
ioriten or "cottage mark" was used to fill this function in written works, especially
bunraku and
kabuki scripts. The
JIS character set, however, didn't include the mark, and it wasn't a part of
Unicode until
Unicode 3.2 (it now resides at hex 303D, assuming you have a recent Unicode font:
〽). In the absence of the right character,
word processor users began using the eighth note mark instead.
In Japanese, the symbol is called onpu, which simply means "note."