Japanese Fairy Tales
on shore, for navigation was primitive in those days. Worn out with his
travels and anxiety, the fourth suitor gave himself up to rest. He had
caught a very heavy cold, and had to go to bed with a swollen face.
The governor of the place, hearing of his plight, sent messengers with
a letter inviting him to his house. While he was there thinking over
all his troubles, his love for the Princess turned to anger, and he
blamed her for all the hardships he had undergone. He thought that it
was quite probable she had wished to kill him so that she might be rid
of him, and in order to carry out her wish had sent him upon his
impossible quest.
At this point all the servants he had sent out to find the jewel came
to see him, and were surprised to find praise instead of displeasure
awaiting them. Their master told them that he was heartily sick of
adventure, and said that he never intended to go near the Princess’s
house again in the future.
Like all the rest, the Fifth Knight failed in his quest—he could not
find the swallow’s shell.
By this time the fame of Princess Moonlight’s beauty had reached the
ears of the Emperor, and he sent one of the Court ladies to see if she
were really as lovely as report said; if so he would summon her to the
Palace and make her one of the ladies-in-waiting.
When the Court lady arrived, in spite of her father’s entreaties,
Princess Moonlight refused to see her. The Imperial messenger insisted,
saying it was the Emperor’s order. Then Princess Moonlight told the old
man that if she was forced to go to the Palace in obedience to the
Emperor’s order, she would vanish from the earth.
When the Emperor was told of her persistence in refusing to obey his
summons, and that if pressed to obey she would disappear altogether
from sight, he determined to go and see her. So he planned to go on a
hunting excursion in the neighborhood of the bamboo-cutter’s house, and
see the Princess himself. He sent word to the old man of his intention,
and he received consent to the scheme. The next day the Emperor set out
with his retinue, which he soon managed to outride. He found the
bamboo-cutter’s house and dismounted. He then entered the house and
went straight to where the Princess was sitting with her attendant
maidens.
Never had he seen any one so wonderfully beautiful, and he could not
but look at her, for she was more lovely than any human being as she
shone in her own soft radiance. When Princess Moonlight became aware
that a stranger was looking at her she tried to escape from the room,
but the Emperor caught her and begged her to listen to what he had to
say. Her only answer was to hide her face in her sleeves.
The Emperor fell deeply in love with her, and begged her to come to the
Court, where he would give her a position of honor and everything she
could wish for. He was about to send for one of the Imperial palanquins
to take her back with him at once, saying that her grace and beauty
should adorn a Court, and not be hidden in a bamboo-cutter’s cottage.
But the Princess stopped him. She said that if she were forced to go to
the Palace she would turn at once into a shadow, and even as she spoke
she began to lose her form. Her figure faded from his sight while he
looked.
The Emperor then promised to leave her free if only she would resume
her former shape, which she did.
It was now time for him to return, for his retinue would be wondering
what had happened to their Royal master when they missed him for so
long. So he bade her good-by, and left the house with a sad heart.
Princess Moonlight was for him the most beautiful woman in the world;
all others were dark beside her, and he thought of her night and day.
His Majesty now spent much of his time in writing poems, telling her of
his love and devotion, and sent them to her, and though she refused to
see him again she answered with many verses of her own composing, which
told him gently and kindly that she could never marry any one on this
earth. These little songs always gave him pleasure.
At this time her foster-parents noticed that night after night the
Princess would sit on her balcony and gaze for hours at the moon, in a
spirit of the deepest dejection, ending always in a burst of tears. One
night the old man found her thus weeping as if her heart were broken,
and he besought her to tell him the reason of her sorrow.
With many tears she told him that he had guessed rightly when he
supposed her not to belong to this world—that she had in truth come
from the moon, and that her time on earth would soon be over. On the
fifteenth day of that very month of August her friends from the moon
would come to fetch her, and she would have to return. Her parents were
both there, but having spent a lifetime on the earth she had forgotten
them, and also the moon-world to which she belonged. It made her weep,
she said, to think of leaving her kind foster-parents, and the home
where she had been happy for so long.
When her attendants heard this they were very sad, and could not eat or
drink for sadness at the thought that the Princess was so soon to leave
them.
The Emperor, as soon as the news was carried to him, sent messengers to
the house to find out if the report were true or not.
The old bamboo-cutter went out to meet the Imperial messengers. The
last few days of sorrow had told upon the old man; he had aged greatly,
and looked much more than his seventy years. Weeping bitterly, he told
them that the report was only too true, but he intended, however, to
make prisoners of the envoys from the moon, and to do all he could to
prevent the Princess from being carried back.
The men returned and told His Majesty all that had passed. On the
fifteenth day of that month the Emperor sent a guard of two thousand
warriors to watch the house. One thousand stationed themselves on the
roof, another thousand kept watch round all the entrances of the house.
All were well trained archers, with bows and arrows. The bamboo-cutter
and his wife hid Princess Moonlight in an inner room.
The old man gave orders that no one was to sleep that night, all in the
house were to keep a strict watch, and be ready to protect the
Princess. With these precautions, and the help of the Emperor’s
men-at-arms, he hoped to withstand the moon-messengers, but the
Princess told him that all these measures to keep her would be useless,
and that when her people came for her nothing whatever could prevent
them from carrying out their purpose. Even the Emperors men would be
powerless. Then she added with tears that she was very, very sorry to
leave him and his wife, whom she had learned to love as her parents,
that if she could do as she liked she would stay with them in their old
age, and try to make some return for all the love and kindness they had
showered upon her during all her earthly life.
The night wore on! The yellow harvest moon rose high in the heavens,
flooding the world asleep with her golden light. Silence reigned over
the pine and the bamboo forests, and on the roof where the thousand
men-at-arms waited.
Then the night grew gray towards the dawn and all hoped that the danger
was over—that Princess Moonlight would not have to leave them after
all. Then suddenly the watchers saw a cloud form round the moon—and
while they looked this cloud began to roll earthwards. Nearer and
nearer it came, and every one saw with dismay that its course lay
towards the house.
In a short time the sky was entirely obscured, till at last the cloud
lay over the dwelling only ten feet off the ground. In the midst of the
cloud there stood a flying chariot, and in the chariot a band of
luminous beings. One amongst them who looked like a king and appeared
to be the chief stepped out of the chariot, and, poised in air, called
to the old man to come out.
“The time has come,” he said, “for Princess Moonlight to return to the
moon from whence she came. She committed a grave fault, and as a
punishment was sent to live down here for a time. We know what good
care you have taken of the Princess, and we have rewarded you for this
and have sent you wealth and prosperity. We put the gold in the bamboos
for you to find.”
“I have brought up this Princess for twenty years and never once has
she done a wrong thing, therefore the lady you are seeking cannot be
this one,” said the old man. “I pray you to look elsewhere.”
Then the messenger called aloud, saying:
“Princess Moonlight, come out from this lowly dwelling. Rest not here
another moment.”
At these words the screens of the Princess’s room slid open of their
own accord, revealing the Princess shining in her own radiance, bright
and wonderful and full of beauty.
The messenger led her forth and placed her in the chariot. She looked
back, and saw with pity the deep sorrow of the old man. She spoke to
him many comforting words, and told him that it was not her will to
leave him and that he must always think of her when looking at the
moon.
The bamboo-cutter implored to be allowed to accompany her, but this was
not allowed. The Princess took off her embroidered outer garment and
gave it to him as a keepsake.
One of the moon beings in the chariot held a wonderful coat of wings,
another had a phial full of the Elixir of Life which was given the
Princess to drink. She swallowed a little and was about to give the
rest to the old man, but she was prevented from doing so.
The robe of wings was about to be put upon her shoulders, but she said:
“Wait a little. I must not forget my good friend the Emperor. I must
write him once more to say good-by while still in this human form.”
In spite of the impatience of the messengers and charioteers she kept
them waiting while she wrote. She placed the phial of the Elixir of
Life with the letter, and, giving them to the old man, she asked him to
deliver them to the Emperor.
Then the chariot began to roll heavenwards towards the moon, and as
they all gazed with tearful eyes at the receding Princess, the dawn
broke, and in the rosy light of day the moon-chariot and all in it were
lost amongst the fleecy clouds that were now wafted across the sky on
the wings of the morning wind.
Princess Moonlight’s letter was carried to the Palace. His Majesty was
afraid to touch the Elixir of Life, so he sent it with the letter to
the top of the most sacred mountain in the land. Mount Fuji, and there
the Royal emissaries burnt it on the summit at sunrise. So to this day
people say there is smoke to be seen rising from the top of Mount Fuji
to the clouds.
THE MIRROR OF MATSUYAMA
A STORY OF OLD JAPAN
Long years ago in old Japan there lived in the Province of Echigo, a
very remote part of Japan even in these days, a man and his wife. When
this story begins they had been married for some years and were blessed
with one little daughter. She was the joy and pride of both their
lives, and in her they stored an endless source of happiness for their
old age.
What golden letter days in their memory were these that had marked her
growing up from babyhood; the visit to the temple when she was just
thirty days old, her proud mother carrying her, robed in ceremonial
kimono, to be put under the patronage of the family’s household god;
then her first dolls festival, when her parents gave her a set of dolls
and their miniature belongings, to be added to as year succeeded year;
and perhaps the most important occasion of all, on her third birthday,
when her first OBI (broad brocade sash) of scarlet and gold was tied
round her small waist, a sign that she had crossed the threshold of
girlhood and left infancy behind. Now that she was seven years of age,
and had learned to talk and to wait upon her parents in those several
little ways so dear to the hearts of fond parents, their cup of