The younger sister
No episode in the Kojiki begins with Tamayori-bime. The chronicle does not tell her birth and gives her no parents of her own; she enters as the younger sister, 弟, of Toyotama-hime, and her father is the sea-god, her sister’s father, only because of that. By the time she is named, the story that brought her there is over. Her sister has come up out of the sea, given birth on the shore in her own shape, been seen by Hoori, left the child where he lay and closed the sea-boundary behind her. Then one sentence brings the younger sister in, and gives her two things to do at once.
然後者，雖恨其伺情，不忍戀心，因治養其御子之緣，附其弟玉依毗賣而獻歌之
“Nevertheless afterwards, although angry at his having wished to peep, she could not restrain her loving heart, and she entrusted to her younger sister Jewel-Good-Princess, on the occasion of her nursing the august child, a Song to be presented [to His Augustness Fire-Subside].” — Kojiki, Sect. XLII, tr. Basil Hall Chamberlain (1882)
The sentence belongs to Toyotama-hime. She is the one who resents the looking and cannot stop loving; the younger sister is the person to whom the song is handed, 附其弟, and the reason she is the one to carry it is a clause about her, 因治養其御子之緣: she was the one nursing the child. The Kojiki does not say how she came to the shore, who asked her to stay, or whether she ever went back down. Chamberlain’s footnote gives her the only choice she makes in his version. The mother did not return to the upper world, he explains, and so she sent her message by her sister, who had “consented” to act as the child’s nurse. The consent is the translator’s word, not the chronicle’s.
Her name in this sentence is written 玉依毗賣, with the same 毗 that the Kojiki uses in her sister’s name, 豊玉毗賣命. Chamberlain translates it Jewel-Good-Princess and reads it in his note as Tama-yori-bime, and this atlas writes Tamayori-bime. The Nihon Shoki writes her 玉依姫, which Aston gives as Tama-yori-hime. The name is not hers alone: one of the Nihon Shoki’s genealogies in Takamimusubi’s line has another 玉依姫, the consort of a different god and a different figure.
Sent in her sister’s place
The Nihon Shoki puts her on the shore before the birth. In its main text, Toyotama-hime keeps the promise she made to Hoori before he left her father’s palace and comes up to the sea-shore through the winds and the waves, and she brings her younger sister with her. That is all the main text gives the younger sister there. The birth follows, and the shame, and the child wrapped in rushes and left by the sea while his mother closes the sea-path and goes; Tamayori-bime is not mentioned again until she is married. The chronicle’s alternative writings fill the gap in more than one way, and one of them tells the arrival twice.
火火出見尊取婦人爲乳母。湯母及飯嚼湯坐。凡諸部備行以奉養焉。于時權用他姫婦。以乳養皇子焉。此世取乳母養兒之縁也。是後豐玉姫聞其兒端正。心甚憐重。欲復歸養。於義不可。故遣女弟玉依姫以來養者也。于時豐玉姫命寄玉依姫。而奉報歌曰。阿軻娜磨迺。比訶利播阿利登。比鄧播伊珮耐。企弭我譽贈比志。多輔妬句阿利計利。凡此贈答二首號曰擧歌
“Hiko-ho-ho-demi no Mikoto took other women and made them wet-nurses, bathing-women, boiled-rice-chewers, and washerwomen. All these various Be were provided for the respectful nurture of the infant. The provision at this time, by means of other women, of milk for the nurture of the august child was the origin of the present practice of engaging temporarily wet-nurses to bring up infants. After this, when Toyo-tama-hime heard what a fine boy her child was, her heart was greatly moved with affection, and she wished to come back and bring him up herself. But she could not rightly do so, and therefore she sent her younger sister Tama-yori-hime to nurture him. Now when Toyo-tama-hime sent Tama-yori-hime, she offered (to Hoho-demi no Mikoto) the following verse in answer:— Some may boast Of the splendour Of red jewels, But those worn by my Lord— It is they which are admirable. These two stanzas, one sent, and one in reply, are what are termed age-uta” — Nihongi, Book II, tr. W. G. Aston (1896)
Here she is not the first to nurse the child. Hoori has already given the infant to other women, wet-nurses and bathing-women and the rest, and the chronicle stops to say that this is where the custom of hiring a wet-nurse, 乳母, began. Tamayori-bime comes after all of that. Toyotama-hime hears that the boy is 端正, a fine child, and wants to come back and raise him herself; she cannot, 於義不可, and so she sends her younger sister, 女弟, to do it in her place. Of all the tellings, this is the only one that says why she was sent, and the reason belongs to her sister: she goes because Toyotama-hime may not.
The song she carries has also changed its place. In the Kojiki the red-jewel song is the mother’s first message, and Hoori’s song of the wild ducks is the answer. In this writing Hoori has already sung, and the red-jewel verse that goes with Tamayori-bime is the reply, 報歌. The chronicle names the pair 擧歌, age-uta, and its text spells the verse in characters chosen for their sound, 阿軻娜磨迺 and the rest, while Aston turns it into English lines. In both books the younger sister is the one who takes the song, and in neither does she sing it or say a word of her own.
Aunt and wife
The Kojiki leaves her with the child and the song and finishes Hoori’s story first. When it comes back to her, the child she nursed is a grown man, and she is his wife.
娶其姨，玉依毗卖命，生御子，名五濑命，次，稻冰命。次，御毛沼命。次，若御毛沼命，亦名豊御毛沼命，亦名神倭伊波礼毗古命。〈四柱〉
“wedded his maternal aunt Her Augustness Jewel-Good-Princess, and begot august children named: His Augustness Five-Reaches; next His Augustness Boiled-Rice; next His Augustness August-Food-Master; next His Augustness Young-August-Food-Master, another name for whom is His Augustness Luxuriant-August-Food-Master, and another name is His Augustness Divine-Yamato-Ihare-Prince.” — Kojiki, Sect. XLIII, tr. Basil Hall Chamberlain (1882)
娶其姨: he took his 姨 as his wife. The word names her through her sister once more, because a 姨 is a mother’s sister, and Chamberlain renders it maternal aunt. In the song sentence she was Toyotama-hime’s 弟; in the marriage she is her nephew’s 姨; the Kojiki has still not called her anything that does not depend on Toyotama-hime. Nothing in the sentence looks back to the nursing. The page prints her name this time as 玉依毗卖命, with a simplified 卖 where the song sentence had the traditional 賣, and with the title 命 that Chamberlain renders Her Augustness.
She bears four sons, and the text counts them, 四柱. Itsu-se comes first, then Ina-hi, then Mi-ke-nu, and last the youngest, who has three names; the third, Divine-Yamato-Ihare-Prince in Chamberlain’s English, belongs to the son this atlas calls Jimmu. The sentence then runs on past the list to two departures, which Ugayafukiaezu’s entry follows: one son crosses the waves to the Eternal Land, and Ina-hi goes into the Sea-Plain, “it being his deceased mother’s land”, in Chamberlain’s words, and the Kojiki’s word is 妣國. The country Ina-hi goes back to is his mother’s, and his mother is the sea-god’s daughter. The character 妣 names a mother who has died, and the Kojiki gives no nearer account of her death.
Mother of four sons
The Nihon Shoki records the marriage in its main text, in its own characters, and with its own word for what she becomes.
以其姨玉依姫爲妃。生五瀨命。次稻飯命。次三毛入野命。次神日本磐余尊。凡生四男
“took his aunt Tama-yori-hime as his consort, and had by her in all four male children, namely, Hiko-itsu-se no Mikoto, next Ina-ihi no Mikoto, next Mi-ke-iri-no no Mikoto, and next Kamu-yamato-Ihare-biko no Mikoto.” — Nihongi, Book II, tr. W. G. Aston (1896)
以其姨玉依姫爲妃: he made his aunt his 妃, his consort. Here too she is 姨 before she is anything else. The chronicle counts the sons as the Kojiki does, 凡生四男, four male children in all, and its four are the Kojiki’s four in other spellings, with the youngest, 神日本磐余尊, last. The main text then turns to her husband’s death and burial. She herself is given no death and no tomb.
The chronicle’s next book opens with that youngest son, and it begins by naming his parents: he is the fourth child of Ugayafukiaezu, and his mother is Tama-yori-hime, daughter of the Sea-God, in Aston’s English. What the Kojiki leaves to inference from her sister, the Nihon Shoki says in one line. The same book brings her back once more, through her other sons. On the march east a storm strikes the fleet at sea. Ina-ihi asks why he is harassed at sea as well as on land when his mother was a goddess of the sea, then draws his sword and plunges in, and becomes the god Sabi-mochi. Mi-ke-iri-no, whom Aston spells Mike Irino there, turns the complaint on the two sisters: his mother and his aunt are both goddesses of the sea, so why do they raise the waves? Then he too leaves by the sea, over the waves to the Eternal Land. In the storm the younger sister is named by her own sons, and named together with Toyotama-hime, the sister whose errands she ran.