Two Brothers and the Sea Princess:
The Story of Ho-Deri, Ho-Wori, and Toyo-Tama-Hime

by Persia Davis and Laura Stoutenburgh

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. While traveling through the country, Ninigi came across a fair kami maid called Kono Hana no Saku-ya-Hime (Princess Blossoming-Brilliantly-Like-the-Flowers-of-Trees), the daughter of Oho-yama-tsu-mi Kami, a mountain god (Kojiki 140; Nihongi 70). Ninigi became greatly enamored of the maid, and after a single night together she became pregnant. However, Ninigi did not believe that the child was his, because he did not think that one night could be enough to get anyone pregnant. "Heavenly Deity though I am," he said, "how could I cause anyone to become pregnant in the space of one night? That which you have in your womb is certainly not my child" (Nihongi 71, cf. 91). In the Kojiki account, Ninigi added salt to the wound by asserting that the child must be that of an Earthly Deity rather than a Heavenly Deity like himself (Kojiki 143).

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. Three male children emerged unharmed from the flames, and they accordingly received names evoking different phases in the life of a fire. Of these three, the two most important were an elder brother, variously identified as either Ho-Deri no Mikoto (August Fire Shine) or as Ho no Susori no Mikoto (August Fire Climax), and a younger brother called either Ho-Wori no Mikoto (August Fire Subside), or Hiko-hoho-demi no Mikoto (August Prince Rice-Ears). As these alternate names and their variant identities may be somewhat confusing to follow, we shall simply adopt the names as provided in the Kojiki version. But readers should bear in mind that the names given in the Nihongi version are different and equally well known.(1)

Now, Ho-Deri had a sea gift or knack for fishing, enabling him (in the words of the Kojiki) to catch "things broad of fin and things narrow of fin." By contrast, the younger brother, Ho-Wori, had a mountain gift or talent for hunting, enabling him to catch "things rough of hair and things soft of hair." The significance of these respective gifts will be revealed as the story continues.

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. The elder brother gave his fishing hook to his brother in return for the latter's bow and arrows. However this was not very beneficial for either of them. The elder brother, Ho-Deri, soon regretted the exchange and returned the bow and arrows to his brother, asking for his fish-hook back. But by that time Ho-Wori had lost the hook and could not retrieve it. He made a new hook for his brother but the elder rejected it. Next he made many more hooks out of his cross-sword and offered them to Ho-Deri, but the latter again refused them and became angry with his younger brother. "These are not my old fish-hook," he declared, "Even though they are many, I will not take them!" The elder brother became increasingly angry, so Ho-Wori was filled with grief and wept by the seashore (Nihongi 92).

The Kojiki offers some additional information about this section of the story. In this version, it was actually the younger brother, Ho-Wori, who first requested the exchange several times before the elder brother agreed to it. Then Ho-Wori attempted to catch fish, but failed and subsequently lost his brother's hook. After some time had passed, Ho-Deri requested the return of his fish-hook, saying, "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." At this, Ho-Wori informed his elder brother that he had lost the other's hook. By way of compensation, he broke his own sword and from it made five hundred fish-hooks to offer in exchange; but the elder brother refused them. Then Ho-Wori made a thousand fish-hooks, but his brother again refused and replied, "I still want the real original fish-hook" (Kojiki 146). 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. In the Nihongi version, Ho-Wori met an old man by the seashore named Shiho-tsutsu no Oji, the Salt-Sea-Elder. He asked the younger brother why he was so miserable and Ho-Wori told him the whole story. The old man said, "Grieve no more. I will arrange this matter for you." The Salt-Sea-Elder made a basket, placed Ho-Wori in it, and sent him to the bottom of the sea. Upon arrival, the younger brother found himself at the palace of the Sea God, or Dragon King of the Sea.(2) He lingered around a well, near the gate of the palace, and eventually a beautiful woman opened the gate and holding a jeweled water container approached. She was about to collect water when she noticed him standing there. Surprised by his presence, she ran back into the palace, and told her parents there was a stranger outside. The Sea God invited the strange visitor into the palace and asked why he there. Ho-Wori told the story of the lost hook and the unhappiness of his elder brother. The Sea God summoned all the fishes in the kingdom and inquired about the hook. They answered, "We know not. Only the Red-woman [sea bream, a fish similar to red snapper] has had a sore mouth for some time past and has not come." Immediately she was summoned to the Sea God, and they found the lost hook in her mouth (Nihongi 93).

In the Kojiki, the Deity Salt-Possessor (a.k.a. the Salt-Sea-Elder) built Ho-Wori a boat as before and in sending him off instructed him as follows:

When I shall have pushed the boat off go on for some time. There will be a savory august road; and if you go in the boat along that road, there will appear a palace built like fishes' scales when you reach the august gate of that deity's palace, there will be a multitudinously branching katsura [cassia] tree above the well at its side. So if you sit on the top of that tree, the Sea-Deity's daughter will see you, and counsel you. (Kojiki 147)

The Sea Princess, also called Luxuriant-Jewel-Princess or Toyo-tama-hime, thinking the whole scenario very strange, went out to see for herself, and was delighted by the appearance of Ho-Wori. She told her father about their visitor outside the gate, and the Sea God himself went to look, recognizing him immediately as the son of Ninigi no Mikoto. The Sea God invited him inside the palace and spread out eight layers of silk rugs over eight layers of sealskin rugs for him to sit on. The Sea God arranged a table with all kinds of treasures to please him, held a banquet in his honor and presented him with the Sea Princess, Toyo-tama-hime, for marriage (Kojiki 148).

Ho-Wori dwelt in the sea kingdom with his lovely wife for three years, and was so filled with the delights of that place that he did not even once pause to reflect on why he had come there. (Observe that the idea of forgetfulness induced by the magical power of the Sea God is a frequent motif in Japanese mythology.) At length, however, he began to miss his homeland, and he also remembered the former conflict with Ho-Deri that had caused him to leave the place of his birth. So he heaved a great sigh. Toyo-tama-hime had never heard her husband sigh in this plaintive way before. Concerned for her husband, she told her father of Ho-Wori's sadness. The Sea God asked his son-in-law why he was troubled, and why he came to their land in the first place (Kojiki 149). Ho-Wori told the story about his brother's fish-hook and how he had lost it. The Sea God summoned all of the fishes in the kingdom asking if any had taken the fish-hook in question. "Lately," the fishes replied, "the tahi [sea bream] has complained of something sticking in its throat preventing it from eating; so it doubtless has taken the hook" (Kojiki 149). So the tahi was summoned and the fish-hook found in its throat.(3)

Ho-Wori's Triumph

Ho-Wori now prepared to embark on his return voyage. Before sending him off, the Sea God gave him some valuable advice. First of all, he told him how to invoke a secret spell when returning his brother's hook. He must hold it in his hand behind his back (an ancient practice for averting evil), and then call it "a big hook, an eager hook, a poor hook, a silly hook" before giving it back to his elder brother. (This probably meant that it would be too big, so that the fish would see it; too "eager" or premature, so that the fish would be scared away; too poor, so that its user would face poverty; and too silly to be of any use at all. Kojiki 152, note 18.) The Sea God further directed Ho-Wori to grow rice in whichever type of field Ho-Deri did not choose -- high and dry rice fields if the brother chose low-lying "paddy fields" (in which the rice perpetually stands in water), or paddy fields if the brother chose high and dry fields. "If you do thus, your elder brother will certainly be impoverished in the space of three years, owing to my ruling the water" (Kojiki 150). Finally, the Sea God presented Ho-Wori with the jewel of the rising tide and the jewel of the ebbing tide, along with these instructions:

If you dip the tide-flowing jewel, the tide will suddenly flow, and therewith you will drown your elder brother. But in case your elder brother should repent and beg forgiveness, if, on the contrary, you dip the tide-ebbing jewel, the tide will spontaneously ebb, and therewith you will save him. If you harass him in this way, your elder brother will of his own accord render submission. (Nihongi 94)

Ho-Wori went to meet his brother and did everything exactly as the Sea God had told him to do. As predicted, Ho-Deri's magic fish-hook lost its charmed powers, and in addition his rice harvests failed. Furious, the latter approached his younger brother accompanied by a large army. Just as the elder brother was about to attack, the younger put forth the tide-flowing jewel and caused the tides to swell supernaturally. As a result, the flood waters overwhelmed Ho-Deri's army. Nevertheless, Ho-Wori still could not bring himself to kill his brother and at the last minute used the tide-ebbing jewel to save him. For this, the elder brother was extremely grateful. He bowed his head and knelt to the ground, saying, "I, your servant, hence forward will be your Augustness's guard by day and night, and respectfully serve you." For centuries afterward, Ho-Deri's descendents (the Hayabito people) would perform a dance reenacting their ancestor's near drowning and how he was saved by Ho-Wori's compassionate intervention (Kojiki 154; Nihongi 94).

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. In preparation for the event, she crossed the ocean depths bringing her sister, Tama-yori-hime, with her to the shoreline to confront the wind and waves. There she waited for Ho-Wori to return to her. When he finally came and they were joyfully reunited, she told him that she was about to give birth. "My delivery now approaches," she said. "I thought that the child of a Heavenly Deity ought not to be born in the Sea Plain. So, I have waited on you here" (Kojiki 154). Then where the water met the land she built a parturition hall (or birthing hut) using the feathers of a cormorant for the roof. (Building a parturition hut was an expected practice of pregnant women in ancient Japan.)

However, before she could complete the hall's roof thatching she sensed the oncoming birth and told her husband, "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!" Ho-Wori thought this was a strange request and could not resist peeking inside the hall. To his surprise, at the moment of birth his wife turned into a large wani eight fathoms long, with a writhing neck and crawling legs. Terrified at the sight, Ho-Wori fled.

The Sea Princess soon realized that her husband had seen her in her dragon-form, and she was mortified because of it. She abandoned her newborn child and said, "I had wished always to come and go across the sea path. But your having peeped at my real shape makes me very shame-faced." (Note here the motif of respect for personal privacy, and how the violation of this right to privacy produces pollution. There was nothing wrong or unnatural in Toyo-tama-hime's temporary transformation into a dragon. But a deep injury came about when Ho-Wori had the effrontery to look upon her in her time of most intimate privacy.) Feeling betrayed, Toyo-tama-hime closed the sea-boundary between the Ho-Wori's kingdom and her own, forever obstructing communications between them. Then she returned to her father's palace in the ocean depths. (In another version of the tale, she died of grief; see Nihongi 95.)

As for the child, he was named in commemoration of his unusual birth Amatsu-Hidaka-Hiko-Nagisa-Take-Ugaya-Fuki-Ahezu no Mikoto or Heavenly-Prince-Valiant-Lad-of-the-Shore Cormorant-Thatched-Incompletely. Tama-yori-hime remained after her sister's departure in order to nurse the child. Eventually Ugaya-Fuki-Ahezu grew up and became the ancestor to Jimmu, the first legendary emperor of Japan.

Poems of Remembrance and Longing

Although Toyo-tama-hime was angry at her husband, she still longed for him and asked her sister, Tama-yori-hime, to present him with this song:

As for red jewels, though even
The string they are strung on shines,
The aspect of my lord, who is like
Unto white jewels is more illustrious.

As for my younger sister, whom I took
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.(5)

Ho-Wori allegedly lived to be five hundred and eighty years old in his palace at Takachiho, near the southeastern coast of Kyushu (Kojiki 156, cf. 136 note 5). His tomb is said to have been located on the west side of Mount Takachiho.

Concluding Remarks

The legend of the two brothers and the Sea Princess is rich in ethical and psychological symbolism. There is also a complex interweaving of literary forms, with recurrent patterns complementing each other in interesting ways. Perhaps the most prominent motif concerns the problem of distrust in intimate relationships, and how such mistrust can poison the bonds of affection that hold the world together. At the beginning of the story, it was Ninigi no Mikoto's distrust of Princess Kono Hana that led her to undergo the trial by fire in her parturition hut. The three young kami to whom she then gave birth proved her faithfulness, and their names referring to the phases of fire symbolized the power of personal integrity. Yet it is significant that at the end of the narrative, Ho-Wori's distrust of his lovely Sea Princess caused him to invade her privacy in a parturition hut much like that of his own miraculous birth. It was as if the worm of doubt that had tainted his father Ninigi had now come back full circle to infect an otherwise good and noble son. One may also detect here an early protest against female mistreatment at the hands of rude and insensitive males.

A related theme concerns the importance of generosity and forgiveness in cases of unintentional injury or loss. When Ho-Wori accidentally lost his brother's fish-hook, he did everything in his power to make restitution, even sacrificing his own sword in order to forge multiple replacements of the original fish-hook. Yet his elder brother showed callous disregard for these efforts and relentlessly insisted on getting the original fish-hook back. This insistence, plus the fact that he was even willing to let his brother go into exile in search of it across the ocean, shows that he valued personal property more than family ties. When in the end the elder brother was reduced to subservience and forced to acknowledge Ho-Wori as his lord, one feels that this development was only right and proper.

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. His shock at seeing her natural appearance, though understandable, reflected his prejudice against the unfamiliar and unknown. He learned to his cost the price one pays for this kind of prejudice, for as a result he lost the one true love of his life.

Last updated: November 16, 2008

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