The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Princess Kaguya)
As told by Anonymous (Heian-period Japan)
There was once an old bamboo cutter and his wife, who had no children. The old man went into the bamboo grove every day and cut what he could and brought it home. They lived simply.
One day in the grove he saw a stalk of bamboo that was glowing from within. He looked more closely. He cut it open. Inside, in the hollow of the bamboo, was a tiny child the size of his thumb, beautiful and shining.
He took her home to his wife. They had wanted a child for so long. They put her in a small basket and watched her, and within a few months she had grown to the size of a young woman. They named her Kaguya, the shining one. After they found her, the old man would sometimes find gold inside the bamboo when he cut it. They were no longer poor.
Word spread that there was a girl of unearthly beauty in the cottage of the bamboo cutter. Five young noblemen came to ask for her hand.
Kaguya did not want to marry. To put them off, she set each of them an impossible task. She said she would marry whichever of them brought back what she asked.
To the first, she said: "Bring me the stone bowl of the Buddha, from India."
To the second: "Bring me a branch from the jeweled tree on the mountain Hōrai, where the gods live."
To the third: "Bring me the robe made from the fur of the fire-rat, that does not burn."
To the fourth: "Bring me a jewel from the head of a dragon, the one that shines five colors."
To the fifth: "Bring me a swallow's cowrie shell, the one a swallow holds for one breath after laying its egg."
The first nobleman went out and looked, and gave up after a year. He bought a black stone bowl from a temple in another province and brought it. Kaguya saw at once it was not the Buddha's. There was no light inside. She sent him away.
The second nobleman did not search either. He hired the best craftsmen and had them make a branch of jewels and gold and silver to look like the tree of Hōrai. Kaguya at first was almost convinced. Then the craftsmen who had made it came to the door asking to be paid. He was sent away in disgrace.
The third nobleman bought a robe from a Chinese merchant who swore it was the fire-rat's. The nobleman, anxious, brought it. Kaguya threw it on the fire. It burned to ash at once.
The fourth nobleman set sail to find a dragon. A storm caught his ship. The wind nearly drowned him. He came back to shore broken and ill, and gave up the search.
The fifth nobleman climbed up to a high beam in a barn where swallows nested. He reached in to seize the cowrie. He fell from the beam, broke his back, and died from the injury, holding in his hand only a piece of bird droppings.
The five suitors had each failed. Kaguya was relieved.
But the emperor of Japan had heard of her. He came in person. He saw her and wanted her. He commanded that she be brought to court.
Kaguya, when she came near him, dissolved partly into shadow. He could not hold her. She told him she could not be his wife, that she was not of this world. He understood and let her stay where she was. But after that he wrote letters to her, and she wrote back, for several years. He never married, because of her.
In the third year, Kaguya began to weep at every full moon. The old bamboo cutter asked her why. At last she told them.
"I am from the moon. I was sent down here as punishment for a small fault. My time is almost over. On the next full moon they will come for me. I will not be allowed to stay."
The bamboo cutter was struck. He sent word to the emperor. The emperor sent two thousand soldiers to surround the cottage on the night of the full moon, with archers on the roofs. He would protect her. The old people barricaded the doors. Kaguya sat between her parents in the inner room and held their hands and wept.
When the moon rose, light poured down on the house. The soldiers' bows became weak. They could not lift their arms. The doors that had been barred opened by themselves. A procession of beings came down on a road of light from the moon. They wore robes that shone. Their leader walked up to the cottage and called Kaguya by her moon-name, which was different from Kaguya, and she rose without wanting to and went to him.
They put on her a robe that took away her memory of earth. The bamboo cutter and his wife begged. Kaguya, with tears in her eyes, before the robe was wrapped around her, took out a sealed letter for the emperor and a small jar of the elixir of immortality. "Give him these. Tell him to drink the elixir, so he can live as long as the world lasts. Tell him not to forget me."
The robe went on. Her face changed. She could not remember her parents anymore. The procession lifted her gently into a carriage and rose into the sky. The soldiers, when the light passed, fell down weeping where they had been standing.
The emperor read the letter. He did not drink the elixir. He said: "What is the use of long life if she is not in it?"
He gathered her letters and the unopened jar and sent them all up to the highest peak in the country, the mountain we now call Fuji. He had them burned at the summit.
The smoke from that burning, the old story says, has not stopped rising. Even today, look at the mountain. The smoke that comes out of it is the smoke from her letters, and from the elixir of immortality that the emperor would not drink. The smoke goes up toward the moon, where she lives, and where she will be living when we are all gone.