What Is The Ending Meaning Of The Tale Of Princess Kaguya?

That ending slaps you with a soft, unavoidable melancholy — like the soundtrack fading out right after a perfect last line in a song you keep replaying. In the folk version known as the 'Tale of the Bamboo Cutter' and in the famously moving film 'The Tale of the Princess Kaguya', the last moments are packed with symbolism: Kaguya returns to the Moon, leaving behind a letter and, in the old tale, an elixir of immortality that the Emperor burns in anguish. Studio Ghibli's version adds a devastating intimacy — her memories are taken, her earthly attachments are forcibly severed, and she looks down with a face that remembers enough to hurt but not to hold. That bitter-sweetness is the heart of the ending.

Reading it through a modern lens, I find multiple meanings layered together. One reading is spiritual: a commentary on impermanence and the idea that human life, with all its fleeting joys, is not the final chapter. Another is feminist and social: the story shines a harsh light on how women can be sidelined into roles defined by others. Kaguya’s beauty becomes her prison; her foster parents’ and suitors’ desires shape her fate as much as any cosmic law. So when she’s taken back to the Moon, the return can be read both as relief from objectification and as the ultimate negation of her choices. I often think about how that resonates with real-world experiences of being judged or boxed in from youth — there’s a complicated comfort in the thought of escape, but also anger at the circumstances that made that escape necessary.

On a personal note, the ending also reads as a commentary on memory and belonging. Kaguya’s tears as she departs are not just for the people she leaves; they’re for the fragments of herself that fade with each farewell. That hits hard when you imagine places and people you’ve left behind: the smell of a childhood home, the small rituals of a town, the faces that taught you laughter and how to belong. The tale doesn’t wrap things up neatly — and that’s its power. It leaves you with a feeling that life is messy, that returning to origins can be both balm and wound, and that sometimes carrying a memory is itself an act of love.

There's something about the final moments of 'The Tale of the Princess Kaguya' that always sits heavy and soft in me at the same time — like walking out of a rainstorm and feeling both soaked and strangely clean. The folktale's core is simple: Kaguya-hime, found inside a glowing bamboo stalk, lives briefly on Earth, is pursued by suitors and lords, and then one night is taken back to the Moon, leaving behind a trail of grief. The original legend even has the Emperor burning the elixir of immortality on the highest mountain in sorrow, which later becomes the smoking Mount Fuji. That ending reads like a mythic explanation for natural features, but there’s so much more when you pull at the threads — it’s about loss, limits, and the cost of belonging to two worlds at once.

I see it first as a meditation on impermanence. The story comes from a culture steeped in Buddhist ideas where nothing lasts forever, and Kaguya’s departure underscores the painful truth that attachments — to family, to status, to the body — are temporary. She was always from somewhere else, and the Moon’s retrieval is a literalized inevitability of return. But Studio Ghibli’s take turns that inevitability into heartbreak: the moon folk strip her of memories to fit her back into the celestial mold, and what remains are scraps of human love and longing. Watching that, I think about how often we’re asked to leave pieces of ourselves behind to fit into roles imposed by others — a parent’s hope for their child, a society’s expectations of beauty, or even the compromises we make for status. The ending becomes less about cosmic justice and more about the mundane cruelty of being forced into an identity you didn’t choose.

Another layer that I can’t help but love is how the tale critiques power and objectification. Kaguya is coveted not for who she is but for what she represents: a prize, a mysterious origin, a thing to be possessed. The Emperor and noble suitors try to control or own her through quests, decrees, and promises. Her removal to the Moon is framed as a rescue by her birth people, but it also reads as a final denial of any agency she had on Earth. Emotionally, that ambiguity is what makes the ending linger: is it merciful rescue or the last act of a system that never let her act freely? For me, the tear she sheds as she looks down at the humans she loved is the real finale — a mix of grief for what she loses and small, bitter relief that the relentless expectations end. It’s sad, it’s beautiful, and it’s unmistakably human.