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Contents

1. Introduction Page
2. The Moon Princess
3. Thank You Page

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Once upon a time, in ancient Japan, there lived an old man and his wife, who had never had any children, and had always wished and longed for a child of their own, but now they were too old.

The couple lived in a pretty house in a small village, and the old man made his modest living from harvesting the bamboo plants that grew naturally, and in plentiful supply on the mountainside near their home.

The old man's true name was Sanuki Nomiya Tsukomaru, but almost everyone who knew him, called him Taketori no Okina, or Taketori for short, which means bamboo cutter.

Every day, Taketori would walk up the mountain to the bamboo forest, and cut and carry as much bamboo as he could manage. Then he and his wife would use some of it to make household items to sell at the market, and the rest they sold as it was, for other people to use.

But for many years, the ancient Japanese spirits of heaven and earth, called the Kami, had watched over the kind old man and his wife with love and favour, and they had felt their pain, and heard their lonely thoughts and prayers for a child.

So one day, a female Kami who was the princess of the moon-spirits, vowed to make their wish come true. Since the couple were too old to have a natural baby, she decided that she herself would be born on earth as a baby, to be found by them and raised as their child.

Then one morning, as the old man was walking to work, he saw a mysterious glistening, sparkling silver-white light, coming from the bamboo plants, and he hurried over to see. When he got closer, he saw that the light was coming from the stem of one particular bamboo.

Inside the stem, made transparent by the light, Taketori could see a tiny baby girl, only as big as his thumb, curled up, sleeping, and all around her, she was emanating a brilliant, glowing, sparkling light. Open-mouthed, he rubbed his tired old eyes and beard, then stared again, amazed.

Suddenly he was overwhelmed with emotion, as he realized, all at once, that the spirits of heaven and earth, and even the bamboo grove where he had worked so devotedly, for most of his life, had magically bestowed upon him and his wife the child that they had wanted for so long, and the old man's heart was bursting with joy, and he wept.

Then he picked her up gently in his two hands, left his lunch and tools where they were, and carried her carefully home like that, to his wife. "Look! Look!" he cried, as he pushed open the door, and his wife burst into tears of joy as soon as she saw the baby too.

They quickly made a little cradle with a pillow and blanket for her in a basket, and after sweet a little yawn, she lay there comfortably, sound asleep. Then the bamboo cutter told his wife how he had found her. "Oh my goodness!" she cried, "But is she ours? I mean, is she really meant for us? Can we keep her?"

"Well, I think so! Have you ever seen anything so strange?" gasped the old man, and they gazed at each other again, "This must be a magical child! How tiny she is! And all this beautiful light! Where does it come from? If she wasn't an answer to our prayers, how else would she have come to be there?" said Taketori, and his wife nodded, and they

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 07.10.2023
ISBN: 978-3-7554-5528-8

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