[N5] かぐやひめ

This post is part of the #letsreadkaguyahime challenge. The fairy tale of Princess Kaguya for learners with N5 abilities was written by Yoshida Noriko for the Malaysia Books Tadoku project.

What makes this retelling so special are the handmade origami figures by Ishibashi Naoko as well as the fact, that this story features no kanji.

The origami figures convey humor and help with understanding some of important plot points of the fairy tale. With only 2 or 3 sentences per page, the story is however pretty much condensed to the essentials.

A story without any kanji can be a bit hard to make sense of, which is why the words in here also are spaced. For the last part oft the story, where the name of Mount Fuji is explained, it would have made sense to add kanji, in my opinion. As it is, readers who don’t know the kanji for “不死(ふし) = immortality; literally: not die” are missing out on this pun.

I enjoyed reading this retelling for its humor and creativity. I also think it is a good foundation to read a more difficult retelling after.

You can read this story here: https://www.jfkl.org.my/files/user/Tadoku%20Web/my04kaguyafinal.pdf

Length: 14 pages