A child must be born on land
After Hoori returns from the sea palace, Toyotama comes to him because she is pregnant. She explains that a heavenly descendant should not be delivered in the sea realm. A birth house is constructed at the water's edge with cormorant feathers for roofing. Labor begins before the roof is finished, so she enters the incomplete structure.
She tells Hoori that, during childbirth, a being from another land returns to the form native to that land. She will do so now and asks him not to watch. The request makes a distinction between marital intimacy and unrestricted access to another person's body. The husband is told what boundary exists before he crosses it.
Source: Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters, Chamberlain translation · Kojiki §42, arrival and birth-house request
Seeing does not produce understanding
Hoori secretly looks and sees Toyotama in the form of a huge wani, crawling and moving through the effort of childbirth. Chamberlain translates the creature as a crocodile. The Japanese term should remain visible because identifying it with one familiar zoological category can conceal its extraordinary narrative use.
Hoori reacts with fear and withdraws. Toyotama realizes that he has looked and feels exposed and ashamed. She leaves the child, closes the passage between sea and land, and returns to her own realm. She had hoped to move freely between the two homes; the broken agreement turns that possibility into separation. The story does not say that the birth itself made ordinary travel impossible.
Source: Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters, Chamberlain translation · Kojiki §42, forbidden sight and departure
The family continues across a break
The child receives a name that remembers the unfinished cormorant-feather roof. Toyotama remains attached to Hoori despite her anger and sends a song through her younger sister Tamayori, who cares for the child. Hoori answers with a song of enduring remembrance. Affection survives, but the former arrangement is not restored.
The following genealogy identifies this child as the father of the figure later called Emperor Jimmu. Thus a rupture between realms stands within the ancestry of the court's rulers. The passage need not be converted into a warning that all unfamiliar spouses conceal danger. Its more immediate question is what happens when knowledge is taken against an explicit request, and when a family must continue after trust has changed its geography.
Source: Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters, Chamberlain translation · Kojiki §§42–44
- Period / witness
- Kojiki presented in 712 CE; Chamberlain translation 1882. Narrative time is not a historical date.
- Recording context
- Kojiki, a Japanese court compilation attributed to Ō no Yasumaro from material recited by Hieda no Are; cited by Chamberlain’s numbered sections, not asserted as the origin of the tradition.
A recording location is not necessarily a story’s origin. Dates of texts, copies, and translations answer different questions.
Explore time & place →Read the sources
These references support the explanation above. Rights and edition notes are recorded individually.
Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters, Chamberlain translation ↗
Ō no Yasumaro (compiler, as identified in the preface); translated by Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935) · Court compilation presented 712 CE; translation published Yokohama, 1882
Edition & rights note