Kaguyahime or the "shining damsel." She speedily grew up to womanhood, when her beauty attracted numerous admirers. To each of them she assigned a quest, promising that she would marry the suitor who successfully accomplished the task allotted to him. One lover was told to fetch Buddha's begging-bowl of stone from India; another to bring her a branch of the tree with roots of silver, stem of gold, and fruit of jewels, which grew in the fabulous island Paradise of Mount Hōrai. From the third she required a garment made of the fur of the fire-rat, supposed to be uninflammable. The fourth was to procure the shining jewel of many hues of the dragon's head, and the fifth a swallow's cowry-shell. They all failed. The maiden was then wooed by the Mikado, but equally in vain, though they remained on friendly terms and kept up an exchange of sentimental Tanka. She was eventually taken up to heaven in a flying chariot, brought by her relatives in the moon, whence it seems she had been banished to earth for an offence which she had committed.
The episode of the quest of the golden branch from Mount Hōrai may serve as a specimen of this work. Prince Kuramochi, to whom this task was allotted, having had a counterfeit branch made by cunning workmen, produces it and claims his reward. The old man asks him to tell in what manner of place he obtained this "marvellous, graceful, and lovely" branch. Prince Kuramochi thereupon relates his supposed voyage to Mount Hōrai, not, it will be observed, without some bungling and repetition natural to a man who has to make up his story as he goes along:—
"Three years ago, on the 10th day of the second month, we embarked from Osaka. We knew not what
