The Girl in the Bamboo -- A Japanese Folktale

Once there was a woodcutter who made a very meager living off harvesting bamboo. He lived with his wife in a poor, childless house at the base of a mountain on the outskirts of town.

One day, as he walked through a bamboo grove looking for suitable trees to cut down, he noticed a strange, soft light shining out from the base of a bamboo tree.

Hmm. That’s odd, he thought. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I wonder what could be causing it. In order to find out, he took out his axe and proceeded to chop at the tree just below one of its partitioned joints. After two swift blows, his axe opened a small hole in the side of the bamboo tree and light from inside it instantly shot out, streaming across the shade of the bamboo grove in a solid, straight beam.

What on earth? the Woodcutter thought. Then he bent down to have a closer look. What he saw inside the bamboo tree surprised him so much that he recoiled backward, stumbled, and fell.

The face of a tiny girl, no bigger than his thumb had peered out at him. She was a beautiful girl with smooth ivory-like skin, and the light seemed to be emanating from her.

Having always wanted children, the Woodcutter felt that he and his wife’s prayers had been answered. After getting over his initial shock, he got up, walked back over to the bamboo tree, and began chopping until it fell over and the tiny girl inside it climbed out.

She looked up at the Woodcutter lovingly and without fear, and he picked her up and took her home.

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When he arrived at home and showed the tiny girl to his wife, the old woman couldn’t believe her eyes.

She clasped both hands to the sides of her mouth, which was trembling and smiling slightly, and began to cry. Her prayers, she felt, had been answered.

The Woodcutter and his wife named the tiny girl Kaguya and called her by the name of Kaguya-hime, princess who shines in the night.

Kaguya became the center of the Woodcutter and his wife’s world. They cared for her carefully and raised her well. Each day she grew bigger and more beautiful. By the time she was a young woman, word of her beauty had spread near and far across the land and many young men came to ask for her hand in marriage.

Young Kaguya, however, had no desire to marry. She turned her suitors away as quickly as they came.

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Of her many suitors, there were five whose love for her was so strong and passionate that they couldn’t accept No as her final answer.

They returned to her house again and again. They brought gifts and wrote letters. They wooed the Woodcutter and his wife. Each one of them was a splendid young man, and the Woodcutter and his wife would have been happy to have seen Kaguya marry any one of them.

But Kaguya was determined not to marry. She devised a plan. To each of her five relentless suitors, she gave a unique and impossible task. One suitor, she sent to India in search of the stone begging bowl that the Buddha had once used there. Another suitor she sent off to pick a flower from a legendary tree of gold that was purported to grow on the mythical island of Horai. Another suitor she sent off to China with hopes that he would bring her back the fur of a mythic rat whose coat was said to shine with jewels of fire. To still another suitor, she asked that he retrieve for her the five-colored pearl that hung from a sea dragon’s neck. And to the last suitor, she made it known that wished to possess the swallow’s cowry shell, which was thought to be hidden in a nest, somewhere in Japan.

To each suitor she promised, When you bring me back the item I have requested, I will give you my hand in marriage.

The five men, determined to prove their love for Kaguya, set off to fulfill what they knew were impossible tasks. Three returned with fake goods, only to be found out by Kaguya and sent away. One lost his nerve and his will to marry Kaguya as well. The last lost his life.

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Stories of the five suitors and their impossible tasks spread across the land until they reached the ears of the Emperor Mikado who, upon hearing them, became infatuated with young Kaguya and the idea of winning her hand in marriage.

The Emperor traveled to the house where Kaguya lived with the Woodcutter and his wife. He knelt down there before the Woodcutter and explained his wish to marry the beautiful young woman of whom he had heard so many fascinating things. The Woodcutter and his wife were delighted.

It’s the emperor, they thought. What an incredible husband he will be. Surely, there can’t be anyone more suitable than he to marry our precious Kaguya.

But Kaguya still had no desire to marry, not even the Emperor Mikado. Nobody could understand the girl’s reasoning. How could she refuse the Emporer? they all asked.

Something was happening. At night, Kaguya no longer slept. She spent all the midnight hours standing by her bedroom window in sorrow, her face raised toward the moon, crying.

Slowly, the Woodcutter and his wife began to get worried. Why, they wondered, does she spend each night alone, looking at the moon and weeping? They went to her room and asked.

Father. Mother. She replied. I’m really grateful for all that you have done for me over the years. Truly, I am. And I don’t want to leave you. I want to stay here and live with you forever. But, as a matter of fact, I’m not from this world. My home is on the moon and I’m being summoned back to the land of my birth. I must return on the night of the next full moon.

Word of Kaguya’s strange confession passed from the Woodcutter and his wife to one of Emperor Mikado’s messengers. The messenger swiftly traveled to the Emperor’s palace and told him the story the old man and his wife had shared with him. The Emperor, still filled with an infatuation for Kaguya became determined to keep her from returning to the moon. He sent 1,000 soldiers to the Woodcutter’s house and ordered them to stand shoulder to shoulder, surrounding it, so that no one could get in or out.

Following Emperor Mikado’s orders perfectly, the soldiers loyally stood guard around the Woodcutter’s house.

They stood rigid and alert, without the slightest bit of space between their shoulders. Suddenly, however, in the middle of the night, a heavy drowsiness overcame each one of them and they began falling to the ground in sleep, one by one.

As they did so, a radiant carpet of moonlight descended downward from the moon and spread out across the sky. It unfurled itself steadily until it reached a point in front of the window where Kaguya stood weeping. As she wept, a magic chariot departed from the surface of the moon and traveled slowly downward toward her. She watched it indifferently until it positioned itself outside of her window and came to stop.

Inside two guardians from the moon, who radiated in the same way that Kaguya had when the Woodcutter first found her, extended their hands to her. Knowing that she had no choice, Kaguya stepped inside of the chariot and slowly ascended upward.

As she returned to her home on the moon, she looked down upon the thousand soldiers who were sleeping in a large circle around the Woodcutter’s house. There, in their midst, she saw three sad faces, their eyes wide open and filled with tears. They were the faces of the Woodcutter, his wife, and the Emperor Mikado, all of whose love for Kaguya extended to the moon.

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Note: This text is an original interpretation of one of Japan’s oldest and well-known folktales. The main source for this translation can be found here: Kaguya-Hime. This source was also used for detail references Kaguya-Hime.

The images used in this post can be found at these websites: Bamboo Girl, Impossible Quest, Moon People.

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To Read Other Japanese Folktales I Have Translated, Please Refer To These Links:

The Old Man Who Made Flowers Bloom
Jinshirou the Turnip Roaster
The Battle of the Monkey and the Crab