(also transliterated as Akatombo, Aka Tombo, Aka Tonbo, or Aka Tomba) is a famous Japanese children's song (dōyō) composed by Kōsaku Yamada in 1927, with lyrics from a 1921 poem by Rofū Miki. It is a nostalgic depiction of a Japanese red dragonfly seen at sunset by an infant being carried on an older sister's shoulder. Text The poem is written in the voice of someone recalling his infancy and being carried on the back of his sister (or nursemaid; the Japanese lyrics are ambiguous). The speaker now longs for this mother figure, who married at the age of 15, moved far away, and no longer sends news back to the speaker's village. Symbolist poet Rofū Miki (1889–1964), who wrote the poem in 1921, had a similar background. His mother had been married at the age of 15. His parents divorced when Miki was five years old, and his mother moved away, never to return. He was thereafter raised by his paternal grandfather. When he was 12 years old, ten years before the publication of the poem, he wrote its final three lines: Miki's mother, Kata Midorikawa, became a significant figure in the women's movement during Japan's Meiji period. She died at age 91 in 1962, and her gravestone was inscribed with the words “At rest here, little dragonfly’s mother”. Miki himself died two years later, age 76, after being struck by a vehicle. In her 2016 book Music in Contemporary Japan, Japanese music and culture commentator Jennifer Milioto Matsue wrote: Melody Composer Kōsaku Yamada (1886–1965) was an intimate friend of Miki, and set his 1921 poem to music in 1927. Yamada was one of several respected Japanese classical-music composers and poets who in the 1920s sought to create songs for children that were more beautiful and emotional than the standard children's songs of the time – especially the songs prescribed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture – which were pedantic, patriotic, and moralistic. The new style of songs were called dōyō, and they are not merely children's songs but also art songs for adults. Yamada's collection, 100 Children's Songs by Kosaku Yamada, was published in 1927 in the early months of the Shōwa period of the Empire of Japan, and established an enduring style of Japanese song. The melody of "Akatombo" is in a type of pentatonic scale called , here yonanuki chō-onkai (ヨナ抜き長音階), a major scale