The saga of the two feuding brothers and the Princess of the Sea is a series of stories exploring the meaning of trust, loyalty, and the importance of tolerance. Alternative versions of the myth can be found in two places. One version comes from the Nihongi or Chronicles of Japan (720 CE), while the other comes from the Kojiki or Records of Ancient Matters (712 CE). Although they are very similar is many respects, there are some significant differences, which we shall attempt to interpret later in this essay.
The Coming of the August Grandchild to Japan
The story starts with Ninigi no Mikoto, the August Grandchild of Amaterasu Omikami and Takami-Musubi no Mikoto, who descended from Heaven to Japan in hopes of establishing order there...
This accusation wounded Kono Hana deeply, so she built a muro, or doorless hut (for parturition), and entering it declared:
“If that which is in my womb is not the offspring of the Heavenly Grandchild, it will certainly be destroyed by fire, but if it is really the offspring of the Heavenly Grandchild, fire can not harm it.”
She then sealed the muro from inside and set fire to it...
The Two Brothers and a Fateful Exchange of Gifts
According to the Nihongi, at one point the brothers had a conversation and decided to try exchanging their gifts temporarily...
“A mountain-luck is a luck of its own, and a sea-luck is a luck of its own. Let each of us now restore to the other his luck.”
The younger brother became extremely anxious and went to the seashore to lament.
In the Palace of the Ocean Possessor and the Princess of the Sea
The two sacred texts give significantly different records of events for the next part of the story...
The Sea Princess, also called Luxuriant-Jewel-Princess or Toyo-tama-hime, thinking the whole scenario very strange, went out to see for herself...
Ho-Wori's Triumph
“If you dip the tide-flowing jewel, the tide will suddenly flow, and therewith you will drown your elder brother...”
Ho-Wori went to meet his brother and did everything exactly as the Sea God had told him to do...
The Traumatic Birth of Ugaya-Fuki-Ahezu
Soon after the brothers reconciled, the Nihongi tells us that Toyo-tama-hime was ready to give birth...
“Whenever a foreigner is going to be delivered, she takes the shape of her native land to be delivered. So I now will take my native shape to be delivered. Pray, do not look upon me!”
The Sea Princess soon realized that her husband had seen her in her dragon-form, and she was mortified because of it...
Poems of Remembrance and Longing
The string they are strung on shines,
The aspect of my lord, who is like
Unto white jewels is more illustrious.
To sleep with me on the island
Where light the wild-duck,
The birds of the offing, I shall not
Forget her till the end of my life.
The pledge of eternal remembrance indicates that the pair knew they would never see each other again...
Concluding Remarks
The legend of the two brothers and the Sea Princess is rich in ethical and psychological symbolism...
A related theme concerns the importance of generosity and forgiveness in cases of unintentional injury or loss...
The importance of tolerance toward foreigners and those of a different ethnicity from oneself was amply demonstrated by the disastrous consequences of Ho-Wori's reaction on viewing his wife's sea-dragon form...
Notes
| Kojiki 144 | Nihongi 73 |
| Ho-deri no Mikoto (Fire Shine) | Ho no Susori no Mikoto (Fire Climax) |
| Ho-Suseri no Mikoto (Fire Climax) | Hiko-hoho-demi no Mikoto (Prince Rice-Ears) |
| Ho-Wori no Mikoto (Fire Subside) | Ho no Akari no Mikoto (Fire Light) |
Note that Ho-Wori no Mikoto, the third brother according to the Kojiki account, is also identified by the alternative name of Hiko-hoho-demi no Mikoto, which is the same as that of the middle brother in the Nihongi narrative. Comparing these two lists, one can see that both accounts have two of the three brothers in common, and that those two are in the same order of succession. (Ho [no] Susori appears in both versions as an elder brother to Ho-Wori a.k.a. Hiko-hoho-demi.) But there the similarity ends. In the Kojiki version, Ho-deri is the eldest brother of the three, whereas the Nihongi mentions no one by that name and instead adds Ho no Akari as the youngest brother. In the Kojiki version, moreover, Ho-Suseri falls out of the narrative and the rest of the tale concerns the adventures of Ho-Deri versus Ho-Wori (a.k.a. Hiko-hoho-demi); whereas in the Nihongi version, Ho no Susori retains a prominent role as the elder brother, while Ho no Akari disappears from the tale. (One may speculate that three brothers were included by the Shinto compilers for the sake of ritual or symbolic symmetry in describing their origins by fire, but that the popular folk mythology only had place for two brothers and the story of their fateful rivalry.)
2. The Sea God is often characterized as a magnificent Dragon King, inhabiting a lavish palace on the ocean floor. See Nihongi, page 61, note 3. In his capacity as Dragon King, the Sea God is recognizable as Ryujin, the popular kami whose mysterious "tide pearls" control the ebb an flow of the tides. Yet neither the Kojiki nor the Nihongi specifically identifies Ryujin by name. Aston observes in the note mentioned above that the notion of a Dragon King was originally Chinese, in which case this feature of the myth may be a later interpolation.
3. In another version, it was only after retrieving his brother's fish-hook that Ho-Wori married the Sea God's daughter and lived with her in the palace for three years. This is according to the primary version of the story in the Nihongi, page 93. (The Nihongi typically first presents a primary version of the myth in question, followed by a series of alternative accounts. Among the variant versions included in the Nihongi is a close facsimile to that presented in the Kojiki.) One advantage to the primary Nihongi account in this instance is that one can more readily imagine a sea bream carrying the fish-hook for days or weeks in its mouth rather than, as in the Kojiki account, for over three years!
4. The Japanese word for this sea-monster is wani, which Chamberlain and others translate as "crocodile." Aston points out, however, that the ancient Japanese would never have seen crocodiles, as they are not indigenous to that part of the world. Furthermore, the wani are mythical creatures characterized as inhabiting the sea, whereas true crocodiles live in rivers. Finally, Japanese art through the centuries has represented wani as fantastic dragons. See Nihongi, page 61, note 3.
5. Kojiki, pages 155-6. According to the Nihongi, it was the husband who initiated the exchange of poems, and the wife who replied. See Nihongi, page 104.
Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters (712 C.E.). Translated by Basil Hall Chamberlain.
Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697. Translated by W.G. Aston.
Piggott, Juliet. Japanese Mythology.
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