Myths of Marriage Between Peoples

Hoori then marries Toyotamahime, and this too is an exogamous marriage between tribes. Its defining feature is that Hoori, who appears as Yamasachihiko (“Luck of the Mountains”), belongs to a people of the mountains, whereas Toyotamahime belongs to a people of the sea. Here the myth encodes a union between a mountain lineage and a sea lineage in the marriage of Hoori and Toyotamahime, and this too unfolded within a very small, local setting.

At the same time, Ninigi is cast as the child born in Takamanohara when Oshihomimi, positioned as Amaterasu’s son, married Takuhatachijihime, the daughter of Takamimusubi. In other words, with Takamanohara as its stage, the myth points to a marriage alliance between the Amaterasu line and the Takamimusubi line — what was, in effect, an exogamous marriage between distinct tribes.

The tale reveals all the friction of an early intertribal marriage between newly arrived amatsukami and indigenous kunitsukami in a small corner of Nichinan. To put it more plainly, the kunitsukami — who at this stage were still simply the deities of a particular place — were the stronger party.

This episode vividly recalls how, in the intertribal marriages of ancient Japan, a strict taboo forbade even husband and wife from looking upon the customs of the other’s tribe — above all the varied taboos surrounding childbirth, death, and ritual. Stories in which the husband breaks such a taboo in an exogamous marriage appear both in Ninigi’s union with Konohanasakuyahime and in Hoori’s union with Toyotamahime, and if we trace the pattern further back, it is already told in the myth of Izanagi and Izanami in the land of Yomi.

Those myths tie directly to the descent of the heavenly grandchild (tenson korin, 天孫降臨) recorded in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. West of Aoshima, toward the mountains along the border with Kagoshima, rises Mount Takachiho. It was here that Ninigi, grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu, descended from heaven, encountered the local deity Konohanasakuya-hime, and fathered three sons. Aoshima Shrine is dedicated to one of them: Hohodemi, also known as Yamasachihiko. Yet everything I have observed suggests that long before Hohodemi was venerated here, this was a sacred precinct of early seafaring tribes, centered on a Yayoi-era faith presided over by female shamans.

Long before the Dragon Palace legend hardened into folklore, it was maritime priestesses like Toyotama-hime who served as its living archetype. Standing here, one senses that presence most powerfully at the inner sanctuary (okumiya, 奥宮), hidden in the dense jungle at the island's core. Behind the inner sanctuary lies an ancient ceremonial clearing where archaeological remains dating back to the Yayoi period have indeed been unearthed.

The site of this transmission survives at the solemn Udo Shrine, perched on a sheer cliff in southern Kyushu. I have visited it myself, and one feels that it preserves customs from a very old age. Judging from the geography around Udo Shrine, it also seems to point to one distinct possibility: that Toyotamahime’s origins lay to the south, toward the Ryukyu arc.

When we put this into practice, the key turns out to be the princess deities. Among those I have pursued so far on the Kyushu side, for example, are Hayasuihime of the Hoyo Strait, Toyotamahime of Aoshima, Ahiratsuhime of Nichinan, and the goddess of Kushira worshiped by the Hayato of Osumi. Standing on the actual ground of each of them brings the fact that the Ama peoples moved along the Kuroshio into much sharper focus.

Today written with the characters 都萬, the shrine was formerly inscribed as 妻万 and revered since antiquity as Tsuma no Miya—the "Shrine of the Wife." It is dedicated to Konohanasakuya-hime, the goddess who became the principal consort of Ninigi upon his descent from heaven, bearing him the three children who figure in the myths of Umisachi and Yamasachi.

From this very ridge, archaeologists have unearthed an abundance of Yayoi ceremonial objects, including no fewer than fifty-one bronze mirrors—eloquent testimony to a thriving outpost influenced by dynastic China. Though modern land reclamation has erased the inlets below, the fact that the sanctuary stood above a sheltered harbor indicates that worship here dates back to remote antiquity.

Yet for all her prominence, there is another sanctuary that is far more decisive for understanding the Osumi Peninsula and its Jomon heritage: Tsukuyomi Shrine, located in a settlement bearing the singular name of Kushira.

In other words, the arrangement reflects an alliance forged when Takeminakata, representing the expanding sphere of Izumo, arrived on the Osumi Peninsula and entered into marriage with Yasakatome, the local leader. The early rise of Tsukuyomi worship thus seems to have been rooted in this tribal alliance, blending lunar divination for farming and fishing with comb ritualism presided over by female shamans.