Three years went by, and Princess Kaguya took to gazing sadly at the moon. The old man asked her what was wrong.
She said, “I am from the moon. On the fifteenth of August, when they come for me, I will have to go back.” This made the old man very sad, and he asked the emperor to protect her.
Soon it was the fifteenth, the night of the full moon. Two thousand imperial soldiers stood guard around the house.
All at once the sky lit up. A band of people came riding down on clouds and lined up above the ground. The soldiers were overcome by a strange force, and only looked on in a daze.
Princess Kaguya was hiding in the storehouse, held tightly in the old woman’s arms, but when the leader of the moon people demanded her return, the door mysteriously opened, and she slipped out.
The old couple collapsed in helpless tears. The princess left them her kimono as a memento, and in its place she was given a wrap worn by heavenly beings. The moment she put it on, all her sadness and concern for the people of Earth were gone.
She was led into a flying chariot, and vanished into the heavens.
NHK World
NHK World is the international service of Japanese public broadcaster NHK. The stories published in this book were part of a special series produced by Radio Japan, NHK World’s radio service in 18 languages.
TRANSLATORS
Roger Pulvers is an author, playwright, theatre director, translator and journalist. He has published more than 40 books in Japanese and English, most recently a novel written in Japanese, Hoshizuna Monogatari, and his memoirs, If There Were No Japan. Roger was assistant to director Nagisa Oshima on the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. He has received several awards, including the Crystal Simorgh Prize for Best Script at the 27th Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran, the Miyazawa Kenji Prize and the Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature.
Juliet Winters Carpenter is an American translator of modern Japanese literature. She studied Japanese literature at the University of Michigan and is a professor of English at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts in Kyoto. She is a double recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, once in 1980 for Secret Rendezvous, her translation of Kobo Abe’s Mikkai, and again in 2014-2015 for A True Novel, her translation of Minae Mizumura’s Honkaku Shosetsu.
ILLUSTRATORS
After working as a graphic designer, Manami Yamada became an author of children’s books and an artist. Her books include Grandma Nosehair, whose illustrations were selected for the Bologna Illustrators Exhibition in 2008, and Kaeru to Okan (“The Frog and the Crown”). She is the recipient of several awards.
Tomonori Taniguchi was born in Osaka in 1978, and studied Nihon-ga Japanese painting at Kanazawa College of Art. His children’s books have been published in Japan, France and Italy. They include Sarukun to Banana no Yuenchi (“Monkey and Banana’s Amusement Park”) and Pinocchio, la marionnette de fer (“Pinocchio the Iron Puppet”).
Born in Gifu prefecture in 1978, Nao Takabatake is an author of children’s books and an illustrator. He received the Japan Picture Book Award in 2013 for Kaeru no Odekake (“The Frog Goes Out”). His other works include Chiita Dai Se-ru (“Cheetah’s Big Sale”) and Banana Jiken (“The Banana Incident”).
Takumi Nishio was born in Tokyo in 1968. He worked as graphic and set designer for public broadcaster NHK from 1994 to 1999, and later produced animation, illustrations and opening titles for TV programs. He currently teaches at the Yokohama College of Art and Design.
NARRATOR
Yuko Aotani was born in Yokohama and spent five years in London until the age of 14. After graduating from Sophia University in Tokyo, she joined NHK as a bilingual reporter and went on to anchor several news programs on NHK World. Now a freelancer, she is active in a variety of fields ranging from news, culture, and education to voice work.
Once Upon a Time in Japan Page 3