Hoori and Toyotama-hime

Hoori and his elder brother Hoderi were grandsons of Amaterasu, the sun goddess. Hoderi was a fisherman, blessed with the luck of the sea, while Hoori was a hunter, skilled in the mountain ways. One day, they decided to exchange their crafts. Hoderi gave Hoori his magical fishhook, and Hoori lent Hoderi his bow.

But fortune did not favor the exchange. Hoderi caught nothing in the mountains, while Hoori, fishing from the shore, lost the magical hook when a great fish snapped his line and carried it away. Hoderi was furious. The fishhook had belonged to their father, and no ordinary hook would serve as replacement. No matter how many substitutes Hoori offered, even melting down his own sword to forge five hundred hooks, Hoderi demanded the original.

Desperate, Hoori sat weeping by the sea. There he met the wise old god Shiotsuchi, who built him a small boat and instructed him to sail to the palace of Watatsumi, the god of the sea. "Follow the current," Shiotsuchi said. "The path will open before you."

Beneath the waves lies another world, as strange and beautiful as any realm above. Hoori would find there what he had lost, and more besides.

Hoori sailed until the waters closed over his head, but he did not drown. The boat carried him down, down, through the blue depths to the ocean floor, where he found a magnificent palace built of fish scales and coral, shimmering with its own light.

At the gate stood a great cassia tree, and at its base a well. Hoori climbed the tree to wait. Soon, a servant girl came to draw water and saw his reflection in the well. She looked up, startled by his divine beauty, and ran to fetch her mistress.

Toyotama-hime, the sea dragon princess, daughter of the sea god, came to see the stranger in her father's tree. Her human form was beautiful, but her true nature was that of a dragon, a wani of the depths. One glance at Hoori, and she fell in love.

Watatsumi, the sea king, welcomed Hoori as a son-in-law. He married Toyotama-hime, and for three years they lived in bliss beneath the sea. Hoori feasted in the dragon palace, loved his wife, and nearly forgot the world above.

But at last, he remembered his quest. He told Watatsumi about the lost fishhook, and the sea god summoned all the fish of the ocean. The hook was found in the throat of a sea bream, and Watatsumi gave Hoori two magical jewels: one to control the tides, and one to command the waters.

"Return to your land," the sea god said. "When your brother troubles you, raise the tide-swelling jewel and he will submit. When he begs for mercy, use the tide-ebbing jewel to restore him."

Hoori returned to the land above, and with the magical jewels, he subdued his brother Hoderi, who became his vassal. But soon Toyotama-hime followed him, for she was pregnant with their child and wished to give birth on land.

She built a birth hut by the sea and made Hoori swear a single oath: "When I give birth, do not look upon me. No matter what sounds you hear, do not enter the hut until I call for you."

Hoori agreed, but curiosity overcame him. As his wife labored, he peered through a gap in the walls of the hut. He saw not Toyotama-hime but a great dragon, a wani, thrashing and coiling as she brought forth their son.

Toyotama-hime knew at once that she had been seen in her true form. Overcome with shame, she abandoned the child and returned to the sea, sealing the path between the ocean palace and the land. She sent her sister Tamayori-hime to raise the boy, but she herself never returned to the world above.

"I wished to travel between the lands forever," she sent word through her sister. "But you saw my shame, and now the way is closed. Though my love remains, I cannot return."

The son of Hoori and Toyotama-hime grew to manhood and married his aunt, Tamayori-hime. Their child was Jimmu, who would become the first human Emperor of Japan. Thus the Imperial line descends from both the sun goddess Amaterasu through Hoori and the dragon princess of the sea through Toyotama-hime.

The tale of Hoori and Toyotama-hime echoes across time, a story of love between different worlds, of curiosity that cannot be contained, and of the price of broken promises. The way to the sea god's palace remains sealed, but every Emperor of Japan carries the blood of the dragon princess in their veins.