Akai Kutsu is Japanese for “Red Shoes“. It’s a famous nursery rhyme about a Japanese girl with red shoes being taken to a foreign land (America). It was written in 1922 by Japanese poet Ujō Noguchi.

A young girl with red shoes
was taken away by a foreigner.

She rode on a ship from Yokohama pier
taken away by a foreigner.

I imagine right now she has become blue-eyed
living in that foreigner’s land.

Every time I see red shoes, I think of her
And every time I meet a foreigner, I think of her.

When she misses Japan where she was born
I imagine she stares at the blue sea
and asks the foreigner if she can go home.