The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
An old cutter of bamboo finds a child the height of a thumb glowing inside a stalk, takes her home, and within three months she is a grown woman whose beauty brings five noblemen to sit outside the fence in all weather. She sets each of them an errand that cannot be done, the Buddha's stone begging bowl, a jewel from a dragon's neck, a cowrie born of a swallow, and every suitor comes back with a forgery, an injury, or not at all, until the Emperor himself begins writing to her. The oldest surviving work of Japanese prose narrative, and the one the Genji calls the ancestor of all tales.
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- 49% · 9 shared
- 48% · 9 shared
- 46% · 8 shared
- 43% · 9 shared
- 43% · 8 shared
- 43% · 8 shared