In Studio Ghibli’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Kaguya returns to the Moon.
The film adapts The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a classical Japanese story often regarded as Japan’s oldest surviving prose narrative. In both versions, Kaguya is discovered as a tiny girl inside a glowing bamboo stalk and later reveals that she came from the Moon.
Her return is not presented as a simple rescue. Kaguya has grown attached to life on Earth, despite the pressures placed on her by her adoptive parents and aristocratic suitors. The Moon people’s arrival therefore gives the ending a bittersweet quality. The film’s hand-drawn watercolor style emphasizes the contrast between earthly emotion and the detached celestial world.