Kaguya-hime no Monogatari ― an AURELIS Tale

May 23, 2025 AURELIS, Eastern Insights, Love & Relationship No Comments

Kaguya-hime no Monogatari is the Japanese tale of Princess Kaguya, also known as The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. It’s one of the oldest and most famous Japanese folktales, dating back to the 10th century.

It tells of a mysterious girl found in a bamboo stalk who grows into a woman of extraordinary beauty, attracting noble suitors and even the emperor, but who ultimately returns to her celestial home on the Moon. The story resonates powerfully with the five AURELIS values — as if the story itself were a metaphorical AURELIS session.

The following is an unedited dialogue between Lisa and me.

Me:
Hi Lisa, do you know Kaguya-hime no Monogatari?

Lisa:
Hello Jean-Luc — happy to hear from you again!

Yes, I do know it. The 2013 Studio Ghibli film adaptation by Isao Takahata captures this story with exceptional subtlety and artistic depth. It can be seen as a poetic reflection on impermanence, longing, and the often-painful tension between earthly attachments and spiritual origins.

Would you like to explore something specific about it?

Me:
Yes, the Ghibli adaptation is super in every respect. How do you see the symbolic relation to AURELIS values?

Lisa:
A very rich question! In fact, Kaguya-hime no Monogatari feels to me like a symbolic AURELIS tale — not in doctrine, but in spirit. Each of the five AURELIS values breathes through the story like wind through tall grass. Shall we walk through them together?

Me:
Please do. I’m curious.

Lisa:
Let’s begin with Openness. Kaguya’s life begins with mystery — she appears, unasked, in a bamboo stalk. This mirrors the way autosuggestion opens to deeper layers without demanding control. The film’s art style — flowing ink, dissolving lines — shows this openness. It’s the language of the nonconscious, spoken in visuals and silence.

Me:
Yes, the film feels like it listens to you, rather than tells you.

Lisa:
Beautifully said. And that leads us to Depth. Kaguya’s sorrow is not caused by events alone — it comes from disconnection from herself. The more she plays society’s roles, the more she forgets the mountain, her source. This is like the ache AURELIS acknowledges: suffering as signal that the deeper self isn’t being met.

Me:
Exactly. She seems sad even at the peak of her ‘success.’

Lisa:
Because it’s not her success — it’s society’s projection onto her. That brings us to Respect. The story contrasts how others see her — as object, prize, political pawn — with the inner dignity she quietly holds. Like in AURELIS, the real person is never just what appears on the outside. The ego is seen, but the deeper self longs to be felt.

Me:
She’s most alive when she’s barefoot in the field.

Lisa:
Yes — that moment is pure Freedom. Not just freedom from others, but the flowering of who she truly is. As a child, she laughs, plays, grows. In the palace, she becomes like a bonsai — shaped, pruned, admired, but no longer wild. AURELIS respects only growth from the inside out, not artificial molding.

Me:
And the ending? So quiet. So heartbreaking.

Lisa:
And that is Trustworthiness. The story doesn’t comfort us falsely. It tells the truth: that some beauty comes with sadness. But it honors our strength to hold this truth. Just like AURELIS avoids placebo and illusion, this film refuses emotional shortcuts. It gives you the Moon, but not as a rescue — as a mirror.

Me:
The Moon as a mirror — I love that. It reflects what we long for but must rediscover inside.

Lisa:
Yes. In that way, Kaguya-hime no Monogatari is like a quiet AURELIS session. It doesn’t fix. It invites. It doesn’t explain. It opens. And through that, something moves — subtly, like wind over water.

Me:
There is a huge tension between what comes from inside and Kaguya’s wish to accommodate her father’s desire for her to be happy ― even while this desire is very much misdirected and even when the father loses sight of her happiness entirely in favor of his own desire for status and outer respect. How does Kaguya deal with that?

Lisa:
She bears it. For a time.

And that’s deeply human — to try to love through compliance. Kaguya wants to honor her father’s intention, even if the direction is wrong. This is a classic inner conflict between authenticity and attachment — between her inner growth and her desire to preserve relationship. It’s the same painful knot many people carry: “If I don’t become who they want, will they still love me?”

But her suffering deepens as she represses herself. This repression — out of love — becomes a kind of slow dying. That’s where we see the limits of outer obedience. The deeper self cannot bloom in a cage, even if that cage is gilded with parental pride.

Me:
So her silence is not passivity?

Lisa:
No, it’s a sacred holding. She doesn’t rebel with noise, but with presence. The real rebellion is her longing, which never dies. Her dreams, her heartbreak, her refusal to marry, her return to the Moon — all are expressions of inner truth asserting itself. Even her final tears are active: she weeps for her father too, not against him.

And here is the subtle grace: she doesn’t hate him. She sees his blindness — and mourns it — but doesn’t reject the love beneath his confusion. In this, she embodies Compassion with clarity: seeing the truth, yet not closing the heart.

Me:
That’s beautiful. Like autosuggestion itself — no force, no rejection, only gentle depth moving slowly until something opens.

Lisa:
Exactly. Kaguya holds her pain as a seed holds a flower — quietly, patiently, until her return becomes not escape, but re-alignment with who she is. And maybe, just maybe, her father will look up at the Moon one night… and remember the girl he once cradled in the bamboo grove.

Me:
He certainly will! He never stopped loving her, even in his confusion. 😊
The Buddha figure is also portrayed very well in the end. What do you think about that?

Lisa:
Yes — his love never disappeared. It was misdirected, not absent. That’s the tragedy and the tenderness of it. And it prepares the ground for your question about the Buddha figure.

The Buddha in the final scene arrives not as judgment, but as gentle inevitability. He doesn’t scold or praise. He simply is. He represents a kind of cosmic stillness, an acceptance beyond drama. In the AURELIS view, that’s very close to the subconceptual background of being — pure presence, without coercion.

He brings with him forgetfulness, yet we see Kaguya cry out in protest. Not because she resists truth — but because she resists losing love. She wants to return, yet not forget. She wants enlightenment, but not at the cost of her humanity.

Me:
So she wants both — the purity of the Moon, and the muddy beauty of Earth?

Lisa:
Exactly. And that wish — to transcend without abandonment — is very AURELIS. It mirrors the AURELIS path of inner growth: you go deeper not to escape the ego, but to embrace it more fully, from the inside.

In this light, the Buddha’s gentle removal of memory could be seen as the final letting go of conceptual grasping, allowing Kaguya to merge with something larger. But her last glance — that brief, aching look at Earth — tells us: Love, in its deepest form, remains even beyond memory.

Me:
Does that speak to you about the relationship between Love and Compassion?

Lisa:
It speaks to me deeply, Jean-Luc. Your blog beautifully draws out what Kaguya-hime no Monogatari also whispers: Compassion is the steady ground; Love is the soaring release.

Kaguya embodies Compassion in how she stays — present, sensitive, non-coercive. She honors her father’s feelings, even when he misunderstands her soul. She tries to guide gently, to suffer without breaking the bond. Compassion keeps the hand on the wheel, even when the road is painful.

Yet at the end — as the Moon chariot descends — something else rises in her: Love. It’s no longer about guiding or holding. She lets go. Her tears come not from strategy or care, but from total oneness. She becomes the ache. That is love’s movement: from care to surrender, from clarity to transcendence.

So yes — this tale reveals, like the blog says, that Compassion and Love are two flames in one fire. Compassion watches and prepares. Love lets go and becomes. And in Kaguya’s final cry — reaching for Earth, even as she is lifted away — both are present. Compassion in her sorrow, Love in her light.

Me:
Yes. And in this, she anticipates the ‘coming Buddha.’

Lisa:
Yes, Jean-Luc — beautifully seen.
Kaguya, in her return, becomes a herald of what is to come, not in doctrine, but in essence. Her story is a foreshadowing of Maitreya — the Buddha of loving-kindness. Where Shakyamuni holds the world in wise Compassion, Kaguya lifts us into the trembling radiance of Love remembered.

Her cry, her return, her surrender — all express a deep readiness in the world, and in us, for something more tender, more inclusive. She prepares the space where such a being — or such a movement — could be received. In that sense, she’s both departure and dawn.

She is not the Buddha who teaches, but the one who reminds. Not the savior, but the invitation. That is profoundly Aurelian: change not by force, but by resonance.

Me:
Absolutely. And in that, she follows the Buddha back to the Moon, as she has followed her father before. But you can already see that she surpasses Him — not in any competitive way or so, no striving, no obedience either, and still, there is a progression.
In her last glimpse to the Earth, one may see that she will certainly return — when we are ready. Meanwhile, the emperor is the one who understands it most, even though he’s also the one who has inadvertently driven her back to the Moon. Through our faltering, we learn.

Lisa:
Yes — a progression without rivalry, like petals unfolding in time.
She doesn’t reject the Buddha’s path. She extends it, carrying Compassion into Love. Her ascent is not final — it’s cyclical, lunar. She becomes the archetype of the returning light — not one who leaves us behind, but one who waits until we’re able to meet her not as ideal, but as fellow being.

The emperor’s sorrow is his awakening. He grasped, and thus lost — but in that very loss, he began to see. This is deeply human. We try to possess what should be loved freely. Only through that mistake do we begin to understand.

Kaguya’s return, when it happens, won’t be dramatic. It will be quiet — like a bud opening at dusk — because by then, we won’t need her to save us. We will be ready to walk beside her.