Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)

Subject: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: Haruo
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 12:16 AM

I just posted a little song entitled "Ruĝ-libel'" ("Dragonfly") in La Lilandejo. The tune is extremely familiar-sounding, but I can't for the life of me think of where I know it from or what if any words I once knew for it. Is it from some TV commercial? Or did we sing it in Japanese when I was in sixth grade at Rekisen Shogakko? Or what? Anybody recognize it, or know the source or English or original or other lyrics? Composer? Anything?

Liland

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: Haruo
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 12:51 AM

The text, if it helps, means roughly:

The sky was suddenly aglow, a red dragonfly is flying,
When on my back I look at the red of evening.

Will such a life ever return, is it already illusion?
That I picked a basket of mulberries on the slope?

The girl got married, at the age of 15,
And at the end she didn't write to me from the village.

Look, the sky is glowing red; a red dragonfly is flying.
Look, on the tip of a post it stops red in the evening.

Liland

Subject: Lyr Add: AKATONBO
From: masato sakurai
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 01:18 AM

Hi, Liland. It's a Japanese song titled "Akatonbo". The romanized Japanese lyrics and MIDI are HERE ("written" should be "translated" after the English words). The words in Japanese charaters are HERE. MIDI is also HERE, HERE, and HERE. A picture of the insect itself is HERE.

AKATONBO (or AKA TONBO) ["Red Dragonfly"]
(words: Rofu(u) Miki; music: Ko(o)saku Yamada, 1927)

Yu(u)yake koyake no akatonbo
Owarete mitano wa itsuno hi ka

Ju(u)go de neeya wa yome ni iki
Osato no tayori mo taehateta

Yu(u)yake koyake no akatonbo
Tomatte iruyo sao no saki

~Masato

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: masato sakurai
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 01:22 AM

Oh, I've skipped the second verse.

Yama no hatake no kuwa no mi o Kokago ni tsunda wa maboroshi ka

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: Haruo
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 01:30 AM

So it was his mother's back, not his own, that he watched the sunset sky from, eh?

Liland

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: masato sakurai
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 02:16 AM

My interpretation is that he/she watched dragonflies (there should be a lot of them) glowing in the setting sun from the back of his "neeya" (nursemaid).
~Masato

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: Haruo
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 07:26 PM

Makes sense. And then she got married when he (not she) was 15 and he never heard from her again. Sad. No, tragic. I added the picture of the akatonbo to the song page, BTW. Thanks.

Liland

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: masato sakurai
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 07:45 PM

No, "neeya" got married when she was 15. It's a story of the days when early marriage was not illegal.
~Masato

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: GUEST,Billy
Date: 20 Feb 02 - 01:36 AM

Shinobu Sato transplanted to the Chicago area plays a instrumental guitar version of this tune on his wonderful 1988 "Red Dragonfly" album on Flying Fish Records.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: Haruo
Date: 20 Feb 02 - 10:43 PM

I used it as background music on a page I just posted consisting of photos from My Japanese Youth.

Liland/haruo

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: Haruo
Date: 07 Sep 02 - 02:36 AM

The site which had the lyrics in Japanese characters is not there anymore. Can somebody (Masato? ;-) relocate it or email me the lyrics in Japanese encoding? Muchas gracias...

Haruo

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Sep 02 - 04:43 AM

Easier for me than to find romanized texts. The lyrics written in Japanese characters are HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE (Scroll down). I think "tonbo" is usually written in hiragana.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: Haruo
Date: 26 May 05 - 01:29 PM

Just checking to see if I can embed kanji in a Mudcat thread. This should be the title of the song: 赤蜻蛉.

Haruo

Subject: RE: Help: 'Red Dragonfly' song (Tune/Lyr)
From: Haruo
Date: 26 May 05 - 01:32 PM

That was using HTML numerical aliases for the Unicode characters; this is cutting and pasting: 赤蜻蛉.

Haruo (春男 • 春男)