Who Is Izanami? Creator Kami, Death and the Land of Yomi

At Arima, on the Kumano coast, a gray cliff about forty-five meters tall stands with no hall in front of it. People pray to the rock itself. Twice a year, on 2 February and 2 October, a rope some 170 meters long is hung from the top of the cliff to a sacred pine at the edge of the shrine grounds.

Local tradition says the rock marks the burial place of Izanami, the kami who bore the islands and died giving birth to her last child. A variant in the Nihon Shoki describes a burial at a village called Arima in Kumano, where people honored her spirit with flowers, drums, flutes, flags, song and dance. This page follows her through two early chronicles, through the land of the dead, and back to that cliff.

The kami who bore the islands

Izanami and her husband Izanagi are the pair who, in the old books, shape the land and fill it with kami. In the Kojiki they stand at a heavenly pillar and walk around it, and the first child, born after she speaks first, is set adrift in a boat of reeds. The two climb to heaven and ask. The heavenly kami divine that the woman should not have spoken first, and tell them to go back and say the words again.

This time the births succeed. The islands come first, then many kami, among them kami of the sea, wind, trees, mountains and fields. Kokugakuin University's Encyclopedia of Shinto notes that she carries the strong sense of an "earth mother," and it lists the long line of kami she bore. The Kojiki claims thirty-five kami for the pair; Chamberlain observes in a footnote that the text names at least forty, so its own sums do not match.

The last birth is the kami of fire. It burns her, and she falls ill. Kami come from her vomit, her waste and her urine, among them the kami of metal and of clay. Then she dies.

Two records, side by side

The encyclopedia draws the consequence. Because the Kojiki makes the three noble children, Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi and Susanoo, come from Izanagi alone, it makes Izanami unrelated to the ancestral kami of the imperial house. The Nihon Shoki's main text does not.

The land of Yomi

In the Kojiki, Izanagi follows her to Yomi, which Chamberlain renders "Hades." She meets him at the door and says he came too late: she has eaten food cooked at the hearth of that land. She will ask the kami there whether she may return, and begs him not to look at her.

He waits too long. He breaks a tooth from the comb in his hair, lights it and goes in. He sees what has become of her body, and eight thunder kami dwelling in it. He runs. She calls out that he has shamed her and sends pursuers after him, then the thunders with an army. He throws down his headdress and his comb, which turn into grapes and bamboo shoots, and he hurls peaches at the pursuers on the slope. Finally he drags a boulder across the pass.

They speak across it. She says she will strangle a thousand people in his land each day. He answers that he will raise fifteen hundred birthing huts. The encyclopedia notes that the exchange is said to symbolize the origins of human life and death. Afterward the Kojiki gives her a title: the great kami of Yomi.

The Nihon Shoki's variants tell the scene differently. In one, she asks him not to look, he lights a light and sees, and the thunders pursue him. In another, he declares the relationship severed, and the guardians of the road in Yomi relay her message: they have already made lands together, so there is no reason to make more, and she will stay.

What kind of record is this?

The Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki are the earliest sources we could verify. They are court compilations of the early eighth century, not village memory, and the Nihon Shoki shows its method by quoting alternative writings without choosing among them.

Chamberlain's footnotes show how much was unsettled. He quotes the native commentator Motowori, who defined the word he translates "Hades" as the place where all the dead go, noble or humble, virtuous or wicked. That is not a hell of punishment. He also records a suggestion that the word might come from the Sanskrit name of a Buddhist god of hell, and he calls it worth considering, not settled.

Art came later. Around 1850 Utagawa Hiroshige drew Izanagi and Izanami on the Floating Bridge of Heaven as number one in a series called An Illustrated History of Japan; the Chazen Museum of Art holds a copy. The print shows the creation tale placed first in an illustrated history. It does not show the Yomi scene and it is not evidence of worship.

At Hananoiwaya today

The cliff at Arima is the living side of the story. The local community council that promotes the site says the rock is the tomb where Izanami was buried after the fire kami burned her. The Mie tourism federation says the Arima of the Nihon Shoki refers to this rock. The council also calls it Japan's oldest shrine. That superlative is the community's own, and we could not check it.

The tourism federation gives the dates of the rope rite, called Otsuna-kake, as 2 February and 2 October, and the council describes the same rite. The rope runs from the top of the rock, about forty-five meters up, to a pine in the grounds. Mie Prefecture has designated the rite an intangible cultural property, though the two pages word the category a little differently. In autumn, white stones are carried on a flower cart.

Common mistakes and mix-ups

• "Izanami is the mother of Amaterasu." Only in the Nihon Shoki's main text. In the Kojiki, Izanagi alone produces the three noble children.
• "Yomi is hell." A note in Chamberlain's translation quotes a native commentator: it is where the dead go, whatever their lives.
• "Both books tell her death." The Nihon Shoki gives it only in variants.
• "Her grave is known." The Kojiki says Mount Hiba. A Nihon Shoki variant says Kumano. Hananoiwaya follows the second.
• "The threat is the whole story." The thousand and the fifteen hundred are a pair, and the Kojiki ends the exchange with her title, not with the threat.