Hase-Hime, the prayer-born daughter of Prince Toyonari Fujiwara, grows up motherless under a stepmother who hates her — and answers every unkindness with patience, poetry, and music. Summoned while still a child to play the koto before the Emperor, she is honored where her stepmother is disgraced; at thirteen, her poem offered in prayer on the bank of the flooded River Tatsuta stills the roaring waters and restores the Emperor's health. But favor feeds envy: sent away to the wild Hibari Mountains, she is sheltered by a faithful old servant — until the day her father rides out hunting and hears a clear voice reading aloud in a lonely valley.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
From Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki (1908), public domain; told in a fresh in-house rendering.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
