In Studio Ghibli’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, her adoptive father finds her as a tiny baby inside a bamboo stalk.
The bamboo cutter Sanuki discovers a radiant stalk in the forest and sees a miniature girl inside it. She grows rapidly during her early days in the countryside, where local children nickname her “Little Bamboo.” Sanuki later finds fine robes and gold in other glowing bamboo stalks and decides that the girl must become a noble princess.
The film adapts The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a classical Japanese folktale often regarded as Japan’s oldest surviving narrative work. Isao Takahata directed the 2013 film, whose hand-drawn watercolor-like style differs noticeably from the studio’s more conventional cel-animation look.
Kaguya’s origin is sometimes shortened to “a bamboo princess,” but the specific discovery is a tiny baby inside bamboo. Her later celestial identity is a separate part of the story.