The Son of a Second Creator, Bridging Two Divine Lines

Omoikane's genealogy places him at a meeting point between two of the most important lineages in early Shinto mythology. He is named as the son of Takamimusubi, one of the small group of primordial creator deities who appear at the very opening of the Kojiki alongside Amenominakanushi, and who functions throughout the mythology as a kind of second center of divine authority in the High Plain of Heaven, distinct from and sometimes acting alongside the sun goddess Amaterasu's own line of descent. This parentage helps explain why Omoikane, rather than a deity drawn from Amaterasu's immediate circle, is repeatedly the one consulted at moments when the two great heavenly authorities need to act in concert, devising the scheme to lure Amaterasu from the cave, and later helping to determine which god should be sent to pacify and eventually rule the earthly land that Amaterasu's descendants would inherit.

Takamimusubi is often read by scholars as reflecting an older or rival strand of Yamato-period political theology, a heavenly authority tied to the ruling clans' own ancestral claims running alongside, and occasionally in tension with, the solar lineage that ultimately became dominant in the official mythology compiled in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. Omoikane, as the son who provides the crucial wisdom at the decisive moments of both texts, can be read as the point where these two currents of heavenly authority, the sun line and the Takamimusubi line, are made to cooperate rather than compete, his gift for counsel serving narratively to reconcile what may once have been separate traditions of divine sovereignty.