The Tale of Izanami in Yomi, the Underworld
At a Glance
- Central figures: Izanami, goddess of creation turned ruler of the dead, and her consort Izanagi, god of creation, who descends into the underworld to retrieve her.
- Setting: The world of the living and Yomi, the dark underworld of the dead, with the boundary between them at a slope called Yomotsu Hirasaka - from the foundational Shinto creation tradition.
- The turn: Izanagi breaks his promise not to look at Izanami and lights a torch, revealing her rotting body; she, humiliated and enraged, sends the shades of Yomi in pursuit.
- The outcome: Izanagi seals Yomi with a great boulder, separating the living from the dead; Izanami vows to kill a thousand people each day, and Izanagi answers that a thousand and five hundred will be born.
- The legacy: Izanami became the ruler of Yomi and the source of death in the world; Izanagi’s purification in the Tachibana River gave rise to three of the most powerful kami - Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susanoo.
Izanami died giving birth to fire. She and Izanagi had made Japan together - the islands, the mountains, the rivers, and the long succession of kami who would govern them - but when the god of fire, Kagutsuchi, came into the world, the burning of his passage through her body killed her. Izanagi wept. Then he killed the child, cutting Kagutsuchi to pieces with his sword. Even that did not bring Izanami back. She had already gone down into Yomi.
He followed her.
The Road into Yomi
Yomi is not a place that welcomes the living. It is dark, with the particular darkness of underground places that have never known sun - not dramatic or theatrical, simply the absence of everything. A smell of decay. The sound of Izanagi’s footsteps where there had been no footsteps before.
He found her. She was there in the shadows, and he called to her, and her voice came back to him from inside the dark. She wanted to come back. He should know that. But she had already eaten the food of Yomi, and that bound her here. She would go and speak to its rulers, ask their permission, negotiate what could be negotiated. He should wait. And there was one thing - he must not look at her. He must not bring a light.
He agreed. He waited in the dark.
The Torch
She was gone a long time.
The darkness pressed in. Izanagi stood still as long as he could stand it, and then longer, and then he did what she had asked him not to do. He broke a tooth from his comb, held the end to a flame. A small light. Enough to see.
What he saw was Izanami.
She was rotting. Her body moved with maggots. Eight kinds of thunder-spirits had taken shape in the decomposing flesh - at her head, her breast, her belly, her back, her genitals, her hands, her feet, in the hollow of her left hand. She had been in Yomi long enough that Yomi had claimed her.
He ran.
Izanami’s voice came behind him in the dark - not grieving, not asking him to stop. She called for the Yomotsu-shikome, the hag-women of the underworld, and they came. Izanagi pulled his black headdress off and threw it behind him; it became a cluster of grapes, and the hag-women stopped to eat. He ran while they ate. When they finished they came again, and he tore off his comb and threw it down, and bamboo shoots burst from the ground, thick and tangled, and the hag-women stopped again. He ran. Behind him Izanami herself gave chase now, and she had brought the eight thunder-beings with her, and an army of fifteen hundred soldiers of Yomi.
The Boulder at Yomotsu Hirasaka
The boundary between Yomi and the world of the living is a slope - Yomotsu Hirasaka. Izanagi reached the base of it with the armies of the dead at his back. He had run all the way from wherever in Yomi she had stood with the comb-tooth torch still lit in his hand. At the slope he found three peaches growing in the grey soil at the entrance to the underworld. He turned and threw them. The army of Yomi fled from the fruit.
Then he put his shoulder to a great boulder and rolled it across the entrance. The stone sealed the passage. He stood on the living side, breathing, and Izanami stood on the dead side, and between them was the rock.
She spoke first.
If you do this, she said, I will kill a thousand people in your lands every day.
He answered without hesitation.
Then I will cause fifteen hundred to be born each day.
That was all. The conversation was over. Izanami remained in Yomi. She became Yomotsu Okami, the great ruler of the land of the dead, and whatever she had been before - the goddess who had stirred the sea with a jeweled spear, who had made the islands from nothing alongside her husband - she was something else now.
Purification in the Tachibana River
Izanagi emerged into sunlight at the mouth of a river called Tachibana, in a place called Ahaji in the province of Tsukushi. The defilement of Yomi - called kegare - was on him, and he needed to wash it off. He removed his clothes. Each item he shed, as it fell, became a kami. His staff became a kami. His sandals became kami. He walked into the current of the river.
The water running over him as he washed became more kami. When he dove under, holding his breath, diving deep - Watatsumi, the sea dragon, came from that. When he rose to the surface, the kami of the surface currents. When he washed his left eye, Amaterasu came into being - the sun goddess, light returning. When he washed his right eye, Tsukuyomi - the moon god. When he washed his nose, Susanoo - the storm god, loud and difficult, already howling.
He told these three to rule the heavens and the sea. He handed them his necklace as a sign of authority and turned away.
The world rearranged itself around what he had made and what he had lost. A thousand dead each day, a thousand five hundred born. The stone still seals the pass at Yomotsu Hirasaka. On one side of it, the dark. On the other, the river, and light on the water where Izanagi washed, and three gods born from grief and running and the simple act of opening his eyes.