Two stories of imperial birth on the shore have been cited above: those of Jinmu and Ōjin. The sea and its powers are prominent in both, but there is also a difference between the two. Scholars of Japanese mythology associate the birth of Jinmu with a “southern line” of myth, in which a divinity from the upper world visits the sea god’s palace and marries his daughter. In contrast, the story of Ōjin belongs to a “northern line” associated with Ame-no-hihoko and Silla. This line, unlike the southern one, includes the shamanic element represented by Ōjin’s mother and especially prominent, well into historical times, at the great Hachiman Shrine at Usa, in northern Kyushu. According to Mishina Shōei, these two lines merged in the Hachiman cult, which came to regard Ōjin as Jinmu reborn.^[65] Both seem to underlie Genji’s experience.

Genji’s triumphal return to the capital is accomplished by a hierarchical coalition of sea powers whose particular interests give a distinct character to each, but who are nonetheless continuous with one another. (1) The most junior, because the most active and messenger-like, is the spirit of Genji’s father. The Kiritsubo Emperor wants to spare his favorite son the anguish of further exile and restore him to his rightful place in the world, and to this end he collaborates with the Akashi Novice and Sumiyoshi. (2) The second, intermediate in rank, is the dragon king (sea god), in the visible person of the Novice. The Novice is desperate to marry his daughter to a great lord from the heights that he himself once abandoned, in order to restore the fortunes of his house, and for that he has long prayed to Sumiyoshi. Where Genji is concerned, he, too, is an instrument of Sumiyoshi. (3) The third is the Sumiyoshi deity, whose nature includes that not only of the three depths of the ocean, Jingū Kōgō’s allies, but of Jingū Kōgō herself. In spirit, Jingū Kōgō therefore participates directly in restoring Genji to glory, just as, in life, she worked to assure the glory (judging from the size of the Konda tomb) of Ōjin’s reign. Sumiyoshi’s efforts on behalf of Genji therefore suggest, behind Genji, the latent image of Ōjin, whose anomalous position in the imperial lineage needs no emphasis.

Sumiyoshi’s role is similarly anomalous. Izumiya Yasuo described the Ame-no-hihoko myth, hence that of Jingū Kōgō, as unrelated to the religion (shinkō) of the Yamato court; while the Genji scholar Hirota Osamu, noting the peripheral role Sumiyoshi plays in Kojiki or Nihon shoki (focused as these are on the orthodox imperial line) called him an “alien deity” (ikyō no kami).^[66] Such views highlight the meaning of Genji’s passage from Suma to Akashi. Genji comes under Sumiyoshi’s protection (the great storm having been a device to this end) by crossing from the “inner” Kinai region, under direct imperial sway, into the “outer” Kigai, the Akashi Novice’s domain; and since the Novice’s figurative value is that of the dragon king, the Kinai–-Kigai border functions as the boundary between land and sea. Therefore it is from the sea, figuratively speaking, that Genji returns to the capital (the land, the imperial realm). This movement, too, associates him with the image of Ōjin, whom both Mishina Shōei and Izumiya Yasuo described as embodying the motif of the sun-child born of the sea.^[67] Speaking more generally, Genji returns to reclaim his inherent “kingship” (ōken) as what some have called a “king from outside” (gairaiō).^[68]