The Story of Hikohohodemi and Umiochi

At a Glance

Central figures: Hikohohodemi (Yamasachi-hiko, Prince of the Mountain) and Umiochi (Watatsumi, the Sea God), along with Hoderi (Umisachi-hiko, Prince of the Sea) and Toyotama-hime, the Sea God’s daughter.
Setting: The land realm and the undersea palace of Umiochi; from Japanese Shinto mythology.
The turn: Hikohohodemi loses his brother Hoderi’s fishing hook in the sea and must descend to the undersea realm to recover it, with the guidance of Shiotsuchi, the god of the tide.
The outcome: Hikohohodemi retrieves the hook, marries Toyotama-hime, receives two tide-controlling jewels from Umiochi, and uses them to humble Hoderi into reconciliation.
The legacy: The marriage of Hikohohodemi and Toyotama-hime produced Ugayafukiaezu, who continued the imperial lineage.

Hoderi had a fishing hook he prized above everything else, and Hikohohodemi had a bow and mountain hunting grounds that fed them both. One day the brothers agreed to trade - mountain for sea, bow for hook, each to try the other’s world for a day. Hoderi could not bring down a single bird. Hikohohodemi stood on the shore with his brother’s hook and caught nothing, and then the hook slipped from the line and sank. He stared at the water a long time. It was gone.

When he came back empty-handed, Hoderi did not want to hear it. He wanted his hook. Hikohohodemi melted down his own sword and made five hundred hooks as an offering, then a thousand - Hoderi refused them all. The original hook, he insisted, or nothing. Hikohohodemi had no way to reach the floor of the sea. He sat by the water’s edge with no clear path forward, and that was where Shiotsuchi found him.

The Advice of Shiotsuchi

Shiotsuchi, god of the tides, listened to the whole story without interrupting. Then he told Hikohohodemi to build a small basket boat, weave it tight, and set out across the water. The currents would take him down. He would come, in time, to the palace of Umiochi - also called Watatsumi - the great Sea God, who ruled everything beneath the waves. Shiotsuchi said to present himself at the gate and wait.

Hikohohodemi did as he was told. The basket boat held, the currents pulled, and the surface light faded around him as he descended. The palace appeared gradually - its walls coral, its courtyards strung with pearl, its fish swimming through the open galleries as casually as birds. He had never seen anything built like it. He waited at the gate, as Shiotsuchi had said.

The Palace of Umiochi

A waiting woman saw him first and brought word to Toyotama-hime, the Sea God’s daughter, who came to look. She brought Hikohohodemi inside and seated him, then went to tell her father. Umiochi came himself to receive the guest - unhurried, formal, the kind of welcome that made it clear the visitor was already known. Hikohohodemi explained his situation: the borrowed hook, the lost hook, the brother’s unyielding anger. Umiochi listened and promised to help.

Hikohohodemi stayed in the sea palace longer than he had intended. The days there did not feel like days above. He and Toyotama-hime were married, the union sealed with the easy certainty of two people who had not expected each other and then could not imagine otherwise. Three years passed. He had almost forgotten that there was a hook to find.

The Hook Found in the Tai’s Mouth

Umiochi had not forgotten. He summoned all the fish of the sea and had them examined one by one. The tai - the sea bream - came up last, moving slowly, its mouth clearly pained. Inside, still lodged in its throat, was Hoderi’s fishing hook. Umiochi retrieved it, cleaned it, and set it in Hikohohodemi’s hand.

Then he gave him something else. Two jewels: the kanju, which called the rising tide, and the manju, which called the ebbing tide. He explained how to use them and offered a piece of advice about the hook’s return - give it back with quiet words, not blame, and stand downhill of Hoderi when you hand it over. The gifts from the sea, Umiochi said, would do the rest if the brother proved difficult.

The Return and the Rising Tide

Back on land, Hikohohodemi found Hoderi as hard as before. He presented the recovered hook with care, spoke without accusation. Hoderi took it and remained cold. Three years of absence had not softened him; if anything the debt had calcified into something permanent. He gave no acknowledgment, offered no peace.

Hikohohodemi raised the kanju.

The tide came in fast. Water climbed the shore and kept climbing, reaching Hoderi’s ankles, then his waist, then his chest. Hoderi shouted for it to stop. He flailed and swallowed water and called out to his brother, promising anything - reconciliation, deference, an end to the argument - if only the flood receded. Hikohohodemi held the manju. The water pulled back. Hoderi stood dripping on wet sand, breathing hard.

After that, the pride went out of him. He acknowledged what his brother had done to recover the hook and agreed to let the rivalry rest. He pledged that his descendants would serve Hikohohodemi’s line, kneeling at the shore the way he had knelt in the rising water.

Toyotama-hime and the Birth of Ugayafukiaezu

Toyotama-hime came up from the sea when her time was near, building a parturition hut on the shore, thatching it with cormorant feathers before the work was finished. She asked one thing of Hikohohodemi: do not look inside while she gave birth. He waited outside. Then he looked.

What he saw made her leave. She had returned to her true form in the labor - a form belonging to the sea, not the land - and the sight of him seeing it broke the thing between them. She went back below the waves. She left the child.

The boy was named Ugayafukiaezu, and he was raised on land with the care of his mother’s younger sister, Tamayori-hime, who came ashore to nurse him. He grew up knowing the sea by report, not by memory. He married Tamayori-hime and their children carried the bloodline forward - toward Jimmu, the first emperor, whose line stretched down through the generations from this moment on the shore where a man had looked when he should not have, and a sea-woman returned to her ocean, and a half-blooded child was left in the light.