[3][4] One day bamboo cutter Taketori-no-Miyatsuko (Toshiro Mifune) discovers a baby girl while he is out in the forest, visiting his daughter's grave.

Incredibly beautiful, the now grown child Kaya (Yasuko Sawaguchi) attracts the attention of everyone around her, including the land's Emperor.

[5] A review in the Los Angeles Times stated: "You wonder awhile whether the moon girl is some wish-fulfillment dream of the subservient, unassertive Japanese women--here made into a god.

Part of the film is a corrosive assault on brutal ruling classes and wily, opportunistic aristocrats, and it’s infused with the same qualities--idealism, social iconoclasm, artistry and almost unobtrusive visual beauty--that mark most of Ichikawa’s movies.

And, if “Princess of the Moon” (Times-rated: Family) pales beside its American equivalents as a piece of special-effects pyrotechnics, it rises above most of them as a celebration of the power of love, the pull of fantasy and the beauty of innocence and moonlight.