Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Taketori Monogatari)
An old man breaks open a stalk of bamboo and finds a moon princess just three inches high.
So begins this 10th-century fairy tale, which follows the spirited Kaguya as she puts a throng of suitors to the craziest of tests. One seeks a robe of fire-rat fur, another a five-color jewel from a dragon’s throat. Cheaters and cowards all, the suitors find – well, a fistful of bird doo, among other things.
Wooed by the emperor himself, Kaguya must reconcile her growing affection for earthy life with her longing for her lunar home.
The oldest surviving work of Japanese prose fiction, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter has lost none of its power to charm with its otherworldly melancholy and real-world humor.Donald Keene’s English translation joins a rendering in modern Japanese by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata and vivid cut-paper illustrations by Masayuki Miyata, who gives Kaguya-hime hair like a force of nature.
Publisher: Kodansha International
Year: 1998
Pages: 177
View jacket art and sample pages courtesy of Google Book Search
