CRANES for Soprano and Piano（1996）

It was around thirty years ago that the pianist Yasuko Mitsui asked me to write a piece for the famous Viennese soprano Olga Warla. A resident of Hiroshima, she had written a poem inspired by the thought of a girl named Sadako* who had been injured by the atomic bomb dropped on the city and had died ten years later while forming origami paper cranes.
I sent the score off as soon as I’d finished work on it but I have no idea what happened to it after that. It was many years later, in the spring of 2022, that I received a letter out of the blue from the Japanese soprano Kanako Hayashi Leopold. She had studied with Olga Warla and asked me for a copy of the score of Tsuru (Cranes) since she was interested in singing the song herself. I did my best to look for the score, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I managed though to get hold of a recording and asked Nao Maeda, who had studied in the Department of Composition at Tokyo University of the Arts, to transcribe it for me. She was employed at the time as an assistant in the Solfège Department of Tokyo College of Music. I pointed out a number of detailed revisions that I wanted made and completed the score after making a few more revisions myself. I’ve added yet further revisions in preparation for publication of the piece on this occasion.
The song is structured in ternary form with the central section employing the first half of the poem, which depicts Sadako as she folds the sheets of paper into the form of cranes, along with her fragility and her never abandoned will to live. I hope that singers who tackle this song will endeavour to express Sadako’s feelings and her desire for life as epitomised by these paper cranes and their ceaseless flight.
This song is being published on the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Its publication has reinforced my conviction that nuclear warfare must never be tolerated.

* Sadako Sasaki was born in 1943 and was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Ten years later she was diagnosed with leukaemia. After falling ill she continued to create her origami paper cranes as a manifestation of her desire to live, but she succumbed and died at the age of twelve after eight months battling the disease. The Children’s Peace Monument in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was unveiled on Children’s Day (May 5) in 1958 to commemorate Sadako and the many children who died in the conflagration. Along with a statue of Sadako, it continues today to feature a display of paper cranes housed in glass cases.

Tomiko Kohjiba
August 2025


I became acquainted with the famous Viennese soprano Olga Warla as a consequence of being asked to accompany her for a recording. The first place I took her to in Japan was the town of Rikuzen-Takada in Iwate Prefecture. Captivated by the beautiful sea and the warm-hearted people, she called for the construction of an Olympia Hall, alluding to Greece where she was born. The hall was never actually constructed, but we decided to make a commemorative CD featuring songs from Greece and Japan, and I wrote a poem entitled Tsuru (Cranes) to express Olga’s wish for peace and in gratitude for her friendship. This poem gained a new burst of life in the form of music composed by one of Japan’s leading composers, Tomiko Kohjiba.
I hope that the message of the peace now enjoyed by the city of Hiroshima will extend on the wings of cranes by means of this song to foment peace amongst the eight billion inhabitants of our planet.

Yasuko Mitsui
August 2025