"Like a flower laid upon a flower it lies, / Or like the night's dew laid upon the night."

So at the end of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, before Kaguya-hime is repatriated to the moon she leaves the Emperor, who'd been a suitor, a letter and some of the elixir of life. Declaring that if he can't have her, he doesn't want to live forever, the Emperor burns the letter and elixir -- or more precisely, has them burnt -- on a high mountain so that the smoke and vapor will rise up to reach her in heaven as a sort of lover's last message. Or at any rate, he'd be rid of it. In some versions of the story, this is the origin of the smoke rising from Mt. Fuji's caldera.

To which I can only go -- wait, what now?

Not that the emperor abjures the stuff -- that works just fine, in narrative terms. It's just, the method seems ... chancy. Even if you assume the order was carried out to the letter, can an elixir of life really be disposed of that way? Can a bonfire loft smoke all the way to the heavens? Can a mortal fire destroy an immortal elixir? If it can, would the results be non-toxic?

So, so many holes in this story.

[Poll #1760654]
---L.