He alighted on a mountain in the western island of Kiushiu. He was attended by the ancestors of the five _be_, or hereditary government corporations, viz.: the Nakatomi, the Imbe, the Sarume, the mirror-makers _be_, and the jewellers _be_, to which some accounts add several others.
Ninigi took to wife Konohana-sakuyahime (the lady blooming like the flowers of the trees). Her father Oho-yamatsu mi (great-mountain person) had offered him both his daughters, but the elder was rejected by Ninigi as being too ugly. Her name was Iha-naga-hime (rock-long-lady). The consequences of this choice were disastrous to his descendants. Iha-naga-hime, in her shame and resentment, uttered a curse and said: "The race of visible men shall change swiftly like the flowers of the trees and shall decay and pass away." This is the reason why the life of man is so short.
When the time came for the younger sister's delivery, she shut herself up in a doorless shed, which, on the birth of her three children, she set fire to, with the object of clearing herself from certain suspicions which her husband had entertained of her fidelity. "If," said she, "the children are really the offspring of the Heavenly Grandchild, the fire cannot harm them." The children and their mother came forth unhurt, and were thereupon recognized by Ninigi as his true offspring and wife.
The "doorless shed" here mentioned, is a "parturition house."[85] It was the custom in ancient Japan for women, when the time drew near for their delivery, to retire to a shed specially constructed to receive them, so that contamination to the dwelling-house might be avoided. This was still the practice in the island of Hachijō in 1878, and even in Japan no longer than a century ago.
The burning of the parturition house represents the ordeal by fire, which, with the ordeal by boiling water or mud, is well known in Japan.
=Ho no Susori and Hohodemi=.--The story concerns itself no further with the youngest of these three children. Of the others, the elder, named Ho no Susori, became a fisherman, and the younger, Hohodemi, a hunter.
Ho no Susori once proposed to his brother to exchange their respective callings. Hohodemi accordingly gave over to his elder brother his bow and arrows and received a fishhook in return. But neither of them profited by the exchange, so Ho no Susori gave back to his brother the bow and arrows and demanded from him the fish-hook.