Kaguya-hime (Shining princess)

June 1996

One day an old man went to the mountain to pick bamboo.  He found a shining stalk of bamboo.  When he cut it, a baby appeared inside the bamboo.  The baby was a very lovely baby.  He brought her to his house.  He and his wife named her "Kaguya-hime."  Its meaning is "Shining Princess."  She grew up very early.  She became a very beautiful lady and the most famous woman in Japan.
   She loved a man who was a Japanese nobleman.  But most Japanese men wanted to get married to her.  So, she made a test, that if one of them could pick up a treasure, she would become his wife.  The treasure consisted of three parts: a dragon's eye, a jewelry tree, and a kind of medicine for eternal life.  But nobody could find the treasure, because this treasure was imaginary.
   When she looked at the moon, she said that she had to go back to the moon, because she was a citizen of the moon.
   But nobody wanted her to go back to the moon.  So the Japanese fought the moon citizen, but we lost.  She went back to the moon.  She left with the sentence, "Thank you for your kindness, grandfather, grandmother."