Long long ago there lived a very poor, old, childless bamboo cutter called Taketori no Okina, meaning "The Old Man who Harvests Bamboo". One day while walking in the bamboo forest, as he normally did, to collect bamboo which he used to make a small livelihood for himself and his wife, he came across a mysterious, shining stalk of bamboo.
After cutting it open, he found inside it an infant the size of his thumb. He rejoiced to find such a beautiful girl and thought to himself that she had been a gift sent to him and his wife as they had no children, so he took her home. They raised her as their own child and named her Nayotake-no-Kaguya-hime meaning "princess of flexible bamboos scattering light".
The tiny exceedingly beautiful girl was so small that the old woman put her into a basket to safeguard her. Thereafter, Taketori no Okina found that whenever he cut down a stalk of bamboo, inside would be a small nugget of gold. Soon he became rich.
Kaguya-hime grew from a small baby into a woman of ordinary size and extraordinary beauty. Eventually, five princes came to ask for her hand in marriage. Kaguya-hime concocted impossible tasks for them. The first was to bring the stone begging bowl of Buddha; the second, a jeweled branch from Hōrai; the third, the robe of the fire-rat; the fourth, a jewel from a dragon’s neck; and the final prince, a cowry shell born of swallows.
After this, the Emperor of Japan, Mikado, fell in love and asked her to marry him. Kaguya-hime rejected him as well, telling him she was not of his country and would vanish if forced to go to the Palace.
That summer, whenever Kaguya-hime saw the full moon, her eyes filled with tears. She finally revealed that she was not of this world and must return to her people on the Moon. The gold found by the old man had been a stipend from the Moon people for her upkeep.
As the day of her return approached, the Emperor sent guards, but they were blinded by a "Heavenly" light. Kaguya-hime gave her parents her robe and the Emperor a letter with the elixir of life. She then donned a feather robe, forgetting all earthly sadness, and returned to the Capital of the Moon.
The Emperor, heartbroken, ordered the letter and the elixir to be burned on the summit of the mountain closest to heaven. The legend says the word for immortality (fushi) became the name of the mountain, Mount Fuji.