For as long as men and women have looked at the stars, they have read in the distant constellations stories of life close to home, filling the sky with maidens and monsters, lovers and heroes, hunters and beasts.
Japan, though, is unusual in having no star lore of its own. The only piece of celestial mythology here originated in China, from where it was brought, probably by monks, early in the eighth century. The love story of a weaver princess (personifying the star Vega in the constellation of Lyra) and a lowly cowherd (Altair, in Aquila) soon won a place in Japanese folklore and is celebrated to this day in the festival of Tanabata on July 7.
Shokujo the weaving girl, daughter of the Heavenly Emperor, so the story goes, was sitting at her loom one day when she glimpsed a handsome herdsman, Kengyu, leading an ox. She fell in love, and her father arranged for the two to be married. But so besotted were the newlyweds that they neglected their duties: Shokujo's loom stood abandoned, while Kengyu's ox grew thin.