This arrangement of Kosaku Yamada’s popular children’s song Akatonbo (Red Dragonfly) was composed by Jon Washburn for the Vancouver Chamber Choir’s third tour of Japan in 2009, when it was sung for the Emperor and Empress in a private concert at the Canadian embassy in Tokyo. Akatonbo is a song for the autumn season. The sunset and dragonfly reminded the poet, Rofu Miki, of his childhood and how much he had missed his sister, who had married and moved away from her home and family. Jon Washburn has treated the piece as a choral fantasy, separating the several phrases of the melody with wordless polyphonic lines which express the deep feelings which the simple words evoke.