The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter

An old bamboo cutter finds a girl three inches tall inside a glowing stalk, carries her home in the palm of his hand, and thereafter finds gold in every stalk he cuts. In three months she is grown, and so beautiful that men camp outside the fence to catch sight of her.

Five noblemen court her, and she sets each an impossible task: the Buddha's stone begging bowl, the jewelled branch from the mountain of Hōrai, the robe of the fire-rat that will not burn, the five-coloured jewel from a dragon's neck, the cowrie shell a swallow is said to carry. Each fails, and the manner of each failure is a small comic novel — a forged branch betrayed by unpaid craftsmen, a robe that burns beautifully, a lord who curses the dragon and swells up like a plum, a man who falls from a scaffold clutching a handful of droppings. The emperor himself loves her and cannot have her either.

She is from the Moon, and on the fifteenth night of the eighth month they come for her, and no army on earth can lift a bow against them. The oldest surviving Japanese story, in Wada Mankichi's clear retelling — five chapters, 21 notes.

English-language digital edition. Translated by Valentin Sarić.

You receive: a 23-page PDF and an EPUB edition.

Digital download only. No physical book is shipped.