Fall Asleep to Japan's Oldest Tale | Princess Kaguya, the Moon Princess

Long ago, an old bamboo cutter found a tiny girl glowing inside a stalk of bamboo. She grew into the most beautiful woman in the land, and princes and even the Emperor longed to marry her. But Kaguya-hime held a secret: she did not belong to this world. Tonight, drift off to The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, Japan's oldest surviving story, written more than a thousand years ago. Gently retold in English, with a calm voice, for sleep and quiet evenings. You don't need to remember any of it. If you fall asleep along the way, that is exactly as it should be. 🌙 Where are you listening from tonight? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chapters 0:00:00 Welcome 0:01:45 The Girl in the Bamboo 0:05:18 The Five Suitors 0:15:18 Prince Ishitsukuri and the Buddha's Bowl 0:18:25 Prince Kuramochi and the Jeweled Branch 0:33:57 Abe no Miushi and the Robe of the Fire-Rat 0:42:34 Ōtomo no Miyuki and the Dragon's Jewel 0:54:23 Isonokami no Maro and the Swallow's Shell 1:03:18 The Emperor 1:13:49 The Moon 1:37:17 Good Night ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A few words from the original Japanese • Kaguya-hime means "the shining princess." Her full name, Nayotake no Kaguya-hime, adds "of the supple bamboo." • Many of the old men's failures give birth to Japanese sayings. When Prince Ishitsukuri throws away the false bowl (hachi), people say he has "thrown away his shame" (haji). In Japanese, the two words sound almost the same. • At the end of the story, the Emperor's letter and the elixir of immortality are burned on the highest mountain in the land. The story says that is why the mountain is called Fuji, a name that echoes fushi, "undying." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ About this channel Ancient Japan at Night brings the classic literature of Japan to you in calm, gentle English, for sleep, rest, and quiet nights. About this recording This English version is our own retelling, translated from the original Japanese text, which is in the public domain. The narration voice is AI-generated. The translation was prepared with AI assistance and checked against the original Japanese by a native Japanese speaker. #sleepstory #japanesefolklore #bedtimestory