Hoori's Line: Grandfather of the First Emperor

Beyond the fishhook dispute that fills most tellings of his story, Hoori occupies a specific and load-bearing position in the genealogy the Kojiki uses to connect the age of the kami to the historical imperial house. Hoori's son by Toyotama-hime, Ugayafukiaezu, is himself the father of the figure remembered in tradition as Emperor Jimmu, the legendary first emperor of Japan and the figure whose accession the traditional Japanese calendar still dates its founding era from. That makes Hoori, in the chronicle's own reckoning, the great-grandfather of the imperial line's founding figure, and a direct link in the unbroken descent the mythology claims runs from the sun goddess Amaterasu down to the reigning emperor. The Kojiki is explicit that this descent runs through Ninigi, Amaterasu's grandson sent down to rule the earthly land, then through Ninigi's son Hoori, then through Hoori's son and grandson, before reaching the record it treats as continuous with the divine one. Read this way, the marriage to Watatsumi's daughter and the quarrel over the tide jewels are not simply adventure narrative; they are the specific episode the tradition uses to explain how imperial blood carries both heavenly descent, through Ninigi, and a claimed connection to the sea god's own line, through Toyotama-hime, in a single genealogy.