Princess Kaguya

In the middle of a whole forest of green bamboo rustling in the wind, one stalk suddenly lit up, as softly as if the full moon had come down to that very spot. Strangely, it was still daylight and the moon had not yet risen. Yet the light kept flowing out, calm and warm, unlike any light ever seen in an ordinary bamboo grove.

This is an old tale that grandparents in Japan still tell their grandchildren in the evening, a story more than a thousand years old that has never grown stale. The only person who saw the strange light that day was a poor old bamboo cutter. Every day he went into the forest alone and cut bamboo to make into household things to sell. He was old and lived simply, with only one regret. Heaven had never granted him and his wife a single child to keep them company from morning to night.

The old man stopped his work and stepped closer to the glowing stalk. The nearer he came, the brighter the light grew. He gently parted the bamboo to look inside. There, within that small hollow, he saw something he had never seen in all his life. A tiny girl, small enough to lie in the palm of his hand, was looking up and smiling at him.

He carried the little girl home and placed her in his wife's arms. The old couple were overjoyed and cherished her like a treasure sent from heaven. Stranger still, from that day on, every time the old man went to cut bamboo, he found gold and precious stones glittering inside the stalks he had just felled. Before long, the once poor family had become quite comfortable.

The girl grew up remarkably fast. Just three months after she was found in the bamboo, she had become a young woman of rare beauty. Her skin and hair still seemed to hold a little of the soft light of the day she was found. The old couple invited a man skilled at choosing names to come to the house. He named her Kaguya, because a gentle light like moonlight always seemed to linger around her. For three whole days the neighbors gathered to celebrate, singing and dancing for the new daughter of the old bamboo cutter and his wife.

Word of Kaguya's beauty spread far and wide. Five young noblemen from powerful families came one after another to ask for her hand, each swearing a deep and tender love. Kaguya did not rush to believe their sweet words. She feared that a person's heart could easily change after marriage. "I will know who is sincere," she had the old man tell the five suitors, "when each of you brings back the very treasure I choose for him. And each of these treasures is among the hardest things in the world to find."

The first had to bring back the stone bowl of the Buddha, from far away in India. He was gone for a long time, then returned with a worn old bowl, insisting it was the real treasure. But Kaguya needed only one glance to know it was false, because no holy light at all shone from it. Disappointed, he went home and never dared to ask for her again.

The second had to bring back a branch of gold and silver from Mount Horai, a faraway mountain found only in legend. Unable to find the mountain, he hired skilled craftsmen to make a glittering fake branch. He presented it and lied that he had crossed distant seas to find it. But just as everyone was admiring it, the craftsmen arrived to ask for their wages and told the whole story in front of everyone. Red with shame, the young lord slipped quietly away. From then on he lived alone deep in the mountains, and no one ever saw him again.

The third had to bring back a robe woven from the fur of the fire rat in China, a robe that could never burn. He managed to buy a strange robe and was sure it was the real treasure. But when it was tested in the fire for all to see, the robe caught fire and burned away in the blink of an eye. The third suitor, too, had to bow his head and admit defeat.

The fourth had to find the jewel of five colors that hangs on a dragon's neck. He sent all his servants out in every direction to search. After waiting a whole year without any news, he hired a boat and sailed out to hunt the dragon himself. At sea his boat ran into a great storm. He grew so seasick and weak that he lay ill in bed for days. At last he gave up, swearing he would never go near Kaguya's house again.

The fifth searched and searched for the precious shell of the swallow. He turned over more nests than anyone could count, but found nothing, and in the end he too came home empty-handed. Five suitors, five treasures, and not one of them brought back what Kaguya had hoped for.

News of her reached the royal palace. The emperor himself came to meet Kaguya and invited her to court. "Come to the palace," he said, "and I will give you a high rank and anything you wish." But when he kept pleading with her to come with him, her form began to fade and blur before his eyes, like morning mist in the sun. Astonished, the emperor stopped pressing her. From then on the two became good friends. Year after year they sent poems back and forth, though she never agreed to live at the palace.

Many years passed this way. But on bright moonlit nights, Kaguya would sit alone on the veranda, gazing up at the sky for a long time with sad eyes, and quietly cry. The old man noticed it again and again. One day he could hold back no longer and asked his daughter why. Her voice catching, Kaguya confessed that she was not of this world. She had come from the moon. On the full-moon night of the eighth month that year, her people on the moon would come down to take her home.

When the emperor heard this, he was alarmed. At once he sent two thousand soldiers to guard the house. One thousand stood on the roof, and another thousand surrounded the doors, determined that no one would take Kaguya away. But Kaguya only shook her head gently. All these defenses would be useless, she said. Once her people from the moon arrived, no power on earth could stop them.

On the full-moon night of the eighth month, a strange cloud slowly came down into the yard. It shone so brightly that the whole yard lit up as if it were midday. Out of the cloud appeared a carriage carrying the people of the moon, each of them glowing softly, just as Kaguya had on the day she was found. The moment that light reached them, the soldiers standing there went stiff, and not one of them could lift a hand or a foot.

One of the moon people stepped toward Kaguya, holding a robe woven of feathers. She raised her hand gently to stop him and asked them to wait. She had not yet said goodbye to her good friend, the emperor. She knew that once the robe was laid on her shoulders, every earthly sorrow would melt from her heart, as softly as a peaceful, dreamless sleep. Kaguya quickly sat down and wrote a farewell letter to the emperor. In it she said that in this life she could never be anyone's wife on earth.

She set the letter beside a small jar of the elixir of life and asked that both be taken to the emperor. Then she turned to the old couple, who had raised her since she was a tiny thing lying in the palm of a hand, and said a tender, tearful goodbye. The old man and woman stood still, their eyes brimming, watching their daughter fade into the glow. The feather robe settled on her shoulders, and in a moment she stepped into the carriage. With the moon people she soared up into the sky, smaller and smaller, until she vanished behind the clouds.

When the letter and the elixir reached him, the emperor read the letter over and over. His heart was heavy, yet warm as he remembered the poems they had sent each other all that time. He could not bear to touch the elixir. So he had the letter and the elixir carried to the top of Mount Fuji, held to be the most sacred mountain in the land. There they were burned just as the sun was rising.

Ever since, people have said that the smoke from that day has never quite gone out. Even now, they say, those standing at the foot of Mount Fuji on a clear morning, looking up at the cloud-wrapped summit, sometimes still see a thin wisp of smoke. It rises high into the sky and slips into the white clouds. It seems to be looking for the way back to where that strange light once fell, into an ordinary clump of bamboo here on earth.