The Moon Princess
a musical fairytale based on Japanese prose for 2 actors/actresses and 2 musicians (usually recorded music)
The story
One day, the bamboo gatherer Taketori finds an infant in the bamboo forest and takes it in as his own daughter. He names her Kaguya Hime. When the time comes to find a husband for Kaguya Hime, her suitors first have to pass a test. None of them are successful, each of them overestimates himself in a different way. Even the emperor, one of her suitors, is rejected. Because Kaguya Hime is a moon princess and has to return some day. When the day comes, she gives the emperor the potion of immortality for his love. But he brings the potion to the nearest mountain and sacrifices it. What use is immortality to him if there is no love? Since that day the mountain has been called Fudschijama, the mountain of immortality.
The work dates back to the oldest surviving Japanese manuscript: Taketori Monogatari (The story of the bamboo gatherer, 900 A.D.). the characters in this fairy tale, which is part of Japanese folklore, do not appear in our European fairy tales. The worldly formula for immortality "...and if they haven't died..." and heroic deeds are substituted by earthly love and the virtues of honesty, bravery and style so omnipresent in Japanese philosophy.