In a time long past, an elderly bamboo cutter named Taketori no Okina discovers a tiny, luminous infant inside a glowing stalk of bamboo. He and his wife, having no children of their own, joyfully decide to raise the mysterious child as their daughter, naming her Kaguya-hime, the Shining Princess of the Young Bamboo. From the moment of her discovery, fortune smiles upon the old man, as every bamboo stalk he cuts thereafter reveals a small nugget of gold, quickly making the family wealthy. Kaguya-hime grows from a thumb-sized baby into a woman of extraordinary beauty in just a few months, and her adoptive parents strive to keep her secluded from the outside world.

Despite their efforts, news of Kaguya-hime’s otherworldly radiance spreads, drawing five noble suitors to her home. Uninterested in marriage, she devises five impossible tasks, agreeing to wed only the one who can retrieve a legendary treasure for her: the stone begging bowl of the Buddha, a jeweled branch from the mythical island of Hōrai, a robe made of fire-rat skins, a colored jewel from a dragon’s neck, and a cowry shell born from a swallow. Each suitor attempts to deceive the princess with a forgery or abandons the quest after encountering disaster, and all fail in their efforts. When the Emperor of Japan himself comes to see Kaguya-hime, he too falls in love with her, but she refuses his proposal as well, explaining that she is not from his country and cannot go to his palace. They continue a correspondence by letter for three years, yet she continues to rebuff his advances.

That summer, Kaguya-hime becomes increasingly sad, often gazing at the full moon with tears in her eyes. She finally reveals to her distraught adoptive parents that she is not of the Earth; she is a princess from the Moon, sent to live among mortals as a form of temporary punishment. The gold the bamboo cutter found was a stipend from her celestial kin. As the date of her return approaches, the Emperor sends guards to protect her, but when an embassy of heavenly beings descends, a strange light blinds the soldiers. Kaguya-hime bids a sorrowful farewell to her parents and the Emperor, writing them farewell letters and leaving behind a small amount of the elixir of immortality. A celestial robe is placed on her shoulders, and all her grief for the human world fades away as she is taken up into the sky to return to the Capital of the Moon against her will.

Heartbroken, the Emperor orders his men to take her letter and the elixir of immortality to the summit of the highest mountain in the land, the great mountain of Suruga Province. There, he commands them to burn the elixir and the letter so that his message might reach her in the heavens, refusing to live forever without her. Legend says that the smoke from this fire rises to this day, and the mountain came to be known as Mount Fuji, the mountain where the immortals’ elixir was burned.