The hare of Inaba is the moral hinge of the Ōkuninushi cycle and it is a small story doing heavy work. A hare wanting to cross from an island tricks the wani — sea-creatures, usually translated crocodiles or sharks — into lining up so it can count them, runs across their backs, and boasts about the deception one step too early; the last one flays it. The eighty brothers, travelling ahead to court the princess of Inaba, tell the skinned animal to bathe in seawater and lie in the wind, which is exquisite torture. Ōkuninushi, coming last because he has been made to carry the luggage, tells it to wash in fresh water and roll in the pollen of cattails. The hare recovers and tells him that he, not his brothers, will win the princess. The brothers then try repeatedly to kill him. What the story establishes is that the kami who ends up building the country is identified by an act of practical kindness to an animal that had it coming, performed by the sibling everyone else treats as a servant.