The Creation of Japan by Izanagi and Izanami

At a Glance

• Central figures: Izanagi and Izanami, a divine couple tasked by the elder gods with creating the islands of Japan and the kami who would govern them.
• Setting: The formless waters before the earth took shape, and later the underworld realm of Yomi; drawn from the Shinto creation tradition.
• The turn: Izanami dies from the burns of her own child, the fire god Kagutsuchi, and descends into Yomi - and when Izanagi follows and breaks his promise not to look at her, she turns against him.
• The outcome: Izanami remains in Yomi and vows to kill a thousand people each day; Izanagi escapes, purifies himself, and from that washing are born Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susanoo.
• The legacy: The islands of Japan - Awaji, Shikoku, Kyushu, Honshu, and the smaller islands - exist as the direct creation of Izanagi and Izanami’s sacred union.

The elder gods handed a jeweled spear to two kami and told them to make land. Izanagi and Izanami stood on the floating bridge of heaven, looked down at the murky, undifferentiated sea below, and lowered the tip of the Ame-no-nuhoko into it. When they drew the spear back up, brine dripped from the point and hardened. That small accumulation became Onogoro - the first island, their place to stand.

Everything followed from there.

The Jeweled Spear and Onogoro

From Onogoro, Izanagi and Izanami set about creating the rest of the land. They raised a great central pillar, the Ame-no-mihashira, and walked around it in opposite directions to perform the rite of union. The ritual required that Izanagi speak first when they met on the far side. But Izanami called out to him before he could speak, and their first children were born wrong - misshapen, feeble. The couple set those children adrift and returned to the elder gods, the Kotoamatsukami, for guidance. The gods examined what had happened and gave their answer plainly: the woman had spoken first. The order had been reversed. Try again.

They walked the pillar a second time. Izanagi spoke. The union took. From it came the islands of Japan: Awaji first, then Shikoku, Kyushu, Honshu, and the others, each one rising out of the water and settling into place. Izanagi and Izanami had done what they were sent to do.

The Birth of Kagutsuchi

The islands made, the two kami began filling the world. They gave birth to the gods of sea, wind, and mountain - kami for each natural element that the living world would need. The births came one after another. Then came Kagutsuchi, the fire god.

His flames killed his mother.

Izanami burned from within as Kagutsuchi was born, and there was nothing to be done. She died and descended into Yomi, the land of the dead beneath the earth. Izanagi’s grief was immense. Even then, holding his rage, he drew his sword and cut Kagutsuchi apart - and from the pieces of the fire god’s body, more kami came into being. But Izanami was gone.

The Road into Yomi

Izanagi could not accept it. He went after her.

Yomi is dark. It is not a place the living are meant to enter or the dead to leave, and Izanami told him as much when he found her at its edge. She had already eaten the food of Yomi. She was bound to it. She would speak to the gods of the underworld and ask permission to leave, but he must wait. He must not light a torch. He must not look at her.

He waited. In the silence and the dark, patience failed him. He broke a tooth from his comb, lit it, and held the flame up.

She was rotted. The body he had known was gone - decay and maggots, a thing that had once been Izanami. He ran.

She came after him, furious, sending the shikome - the hags of Yomi - and then the armies of the underworld, and finally calling after him herself as he scrambled toward the border between the dead world and the living one. He blocked the passage with a great boulder. On either side of that stone, they spoke their last words to each other. She told him she would kill a thousand of his people every day. He told her he would make fifteen hundred new ones. Then the way was sealed.

Izanagi’s Purification

Izanagi came back into the light carrying the contamination of Yomi on him and went immediately to water. He found a river and bathed, and as each piece of his clothing and adornment hit the surface and as he washed the filth of the underworld from his body, new kami were born. From his left eye came Amaterasu, goddess of the sun. From his right eye, Tsukuyomi, god of the moon. From his nose, Susanoo, god of storms.

Three children born from a washing. Of all the kami Izanagi and Izanami had made together, these three would matter most - Amaterasu above all, who would become the sovereign of heaven and the ancestor of the imperial line. Izanagi looked at what the river had given him and assigned each child their domain. Then he withdrew from the world, his work complete.

The islands remained. The sea moved around them. Somewhere below, the boulder still blocked the road.