Toyotama-hime

[14] At the end of three years, Toyotama's husband let out a sigh and revealed his unfinished quest for the lost fish hook, which needed to be returned to his brother.

After the hook was found caught in the sea bream's (tai fish's) throat, Toyotama's husband was set upon a one-fathom long crocodile (or shark) to return home and, with the advice from the seagod, subjugated his elder brother.

Toyotama then gave birth to a son, who was named Ugayafukiaezu ("Cormarant-Thatch-Meeting-Incompletely"[16]) or "Heavenly Male Brave of the Shore".

To his surprise, rather than seeing his wife as he knew her, he witnessed an enormous wani (crocodile, or in ancient usage also meant shark) cradling his child (one Nihongi version claim she was a dragon, Tatsu).

[20] As Ugayafukiaezu grew of age, he married his aunt and eventually conceived a child, Jimmu, who became the first Emperor of Japan.

[21] Some commentators have noted a parallel between Toyotama-hime and the princess Oto-hime in the tale of Urashima Tarō, the boy who saves a turtle.

[24] Japanese scholar Hiroko Ikeda, in her index of Japanese folktales based on the international Aarne-Thompson Index, indexed the myth as type 470C, "The Lost Fish Hook (Umisachi Yamasuchi)": one of two brothers (one a fisherman, the other a hunter) loses the fisherman's hook and, on his quest, meets and marries the daughter of a marine Dragon King; later, he regains the fish hook and is given a jewel to control the tides; at the end of the tale, the hunter's wife asks him not to see her while she is giving birth, but he breaks the taboo and finds a crocodile (wani) in her place.

Hoori meets Toyotama
—illustration by Evelyn Paul [ 2 ]