Taketori Monogatari: The Suitors・”All I can think is that I should certainly regret it..."

“Kaguya-hime said, ‘All I can think is that I should certainly regret it if, in spite of my unattractive looks, I married someone without being sure of the depth of his feelings, and he then proved to be fickle. However grand a person he may be, I should not wish to marry him unless I were sure he was sincere.’”

― The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (竹取物語 Taketori monogatari; around 9thcentury)

Translated by Donald Keene

Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 11, No. 4 (January 1956), 329–355

 

Taketori monogatari is the oldest extant Japanese prose narrative, mentioned in Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji  (源氏物語 Genji monogatari, early 11thcentury) as “The ancestor of all monogatari”. 

 

Donald Keene’s translation dates to 1956 and is not among his best works. It has never been revised either, leaving much to be desired. Nevertheless, this remains more truthful to the original story than any modern adaptation, usually labeled as something about Kaguyahime かぐや姫 rather than the bamboo cutter (竹取  Taketori), whose human heart in the light of otherworldly emotionless beauty of Kaguya and her subsequent gaining of human emotion is the focus of the original.