A distinction made by Abe Yoshitomi and others helps to clarify the situation. Abe distinguished two possible modes of sovereignty. He called the first kōken, the “emperorship” characteristic of the Japanese sovereign in particular, and that assumed by attempts to link Genji’s experience to the Daijōsai. The second, ōken, then designates a more generalized conception of “kingship” or sovereignty. After presenting his detailed argument for an encrypted Daijōsai, Abe acknowledged that Genji’s rise nonetheless lifts him above “emperorship” to a “kingship” achieved at “the level of physis.”^[91] He defined physis (a Greek word) as “the essence of nature, or the absolute energy hidden within the earth.”^[92] Thus, despite his search for a Daijōsai between the lines of the narrative, Abe recognized Genji as a hero whose greater glory comes from depths beyond local title, custom, ritual, or precedent: a hero whose singular destiny is his alone. Abe’s physis resembles the deep, propelling force exerted in Genji’s favor by the powers of the sea.

These powers are at work as visibly in the events associated with the storm and its aftermath as they are in the Hikohohodemi myth. Genji, whose domain is the capital (the mountains), stumbles (the loss of the fishhook) when he is caught in bed with Oborozukiyo. This enrages those who back his elder brother and gives them an excuse to get rid of him (Honosusori’s anger). He therefore retreats to the shore at Suma, feeling deeply wronged. From there Sumiyoshi (Shiotsuchi no Oji)^[93] leads him to the Akashi Novice’s (sea god’s) residence. Genji marries the Novice’s daughter (Toyotama-hime), who is pregnant when he returns to the capital and triumphs over Suzaku and his faction. She then bears him, beside the sea, a child who will engender an emperor. This child is a daughter, not a son as in the myth; but no Heian hero, not even Genji, could have fathered a dynastic founder. Since a commoner could overtly merge his lineage with that of the emperors only through a daughter, a son could neither have lifted Genji higher nor answered the Novice’s prayers to Sumiyoshi. The change from son to daughter therefore transposes the myth into a Heian setting. As for the Novice’s daughter, she ranks too far below Genji either to claim or to receive open acknowledgment as his daughter’s mother. It is Murasaki (Tamayori-hime) who will rear the little girl for the high station to which Sumiyoshi destines her, while she herself fades into the background of Genji’s life.

Genji’s exile thus follows the pattern of the myth. Study of this myth from the perspective of the imperial accession rite shows that this rite originally involved a sacred marriage between a celestial deity and a woman of the nether world, thanks to which the celestial deity (the new emperor) assumed the quality of an earthly sovereign; and that the marriage between Hikohohodemi and the sea god’s daughter is a model of this rite. There are many parallels (lexical items, accessories, and actions) between the Daijōsai and the sea god’s welcome to Hikohohodemi.^[94] Echoes of the Daijōsai seem therefore to be present in the narrative after all, but the implied “enthronement” has nothing to do with Heian “emperorship” proper. Genji never seeks to overthrow his brother, as the Kokiden Consort apparently suspects him of doing. Instead, the issue for the author seems to be the hero’s acquisition of supreme personal prestige outside the framework of the imperial succession—a prestige that will not survive him. As noted in earlier essays, Genji regrets in “Wakana Two” having been unable to found through Reizei (who has no son) a continuing line of emperors, but the author surely never meant him to do so. His supremacy is for one generation only, and it lies outside established forms. Hikohohodemi’s triumph over his elder brother, in a world of essential patterns far removed from particular Heian practice, therefore offered the author a model that required her only to change the hero’s child into a girl. Her hero shines once and then is gone.

Further evidence strengthens the connection between the myth and a generalized acquisition of sovereignty, and connects its sea god to Sumiyoshi. Toyotama-hime and her father, together, are the marine deity of the Azumi clan.^[95] They are therefore another way of describing the triple sea deity born of Izanagi’s purification after his escape from the underworld—the deity who spoke through Jingū Kōgō in the original oracle and who then became Sumiyoshi. The fourth Nihon shoki variant of the story even has Hikohohodemi setting out for the undersea palace from Tachibana no Odo, where Izanagi purified himself.^[96]

Because the Azumi provided the food offerings for the Daijōsai, Miyake described Hikohohodemi’s marriage to Toyotama-hime as, among other things, an affirmation of the clan’s proud service to the imperial house.^[97] The Akashi Novice’s role parallels theirs, as Genji’s parallels Hikohohodemi’s. Miyake further suggested that Hikohohodemi’s story, culminating in the birth of Emperor Jinmu, was added to that of the imperial lineage between the mid-seventh and the early eighth centuries, thanks to the power of the Azumi clan.^[98]

In contrast Honosusori, the elder brother, is the ancestor of the Hayato, a Kyushu people whose long resistance to Yamato domination ended for good in 721. The dance of the Hayato (Hayato-mai) was presented at the palace annually, in token of Hayato fealty, and in this spirit the Hayato, too, took part in the Daijōsai.^[99] According to Shoku Nihongi (797) and Fusō ryakki (ca. 1100), the court prayed for victory over the Hayato at the great Hachiman shrine at Usa, and the final campaign against them was led by the Hachiman priestess Karashima no Masa. Masa, the “staff” (mi-tsue), or vessel of the deity, therefore played the same role as Jingū Kōgō in the Silla campaign.^[100]