After his wife Izanami died giving birth to the god of fire, the creator god Izanagi could not bear to live without her. He went down into Yomi, the land of the dead, to bring her back. What happened there is one of the most haunting stories in Japanese mythology — a tale of love, a broken promise, horror, and a final, irreversible separation that established the boundary between life and death.
The story is told in the Kojiki (712 CE), Japan’s oldest surviving book, and, with variations, in the Nihon Shoki (720 CE). For the story of the creation and Izanami’s death, see Izanagi and Izanami: The Creator Gods of Japan.
The Land of Yomi
Yomi (Yomi-no-kuni or Yomotsu-kuni) was the Japanese land of the dead. It was imagined as a dark, underground place — not a place of punishment, like later Buddhist hells, but simply the gloomy realm where the dead go. Its name may be related to yami, “darkness,” or to a word for “night.” The entrance was said to be at the Yomotsu Hirasaka, “the Slope of Yomi,” in the land of Izumo (modern Shimane Prefecture).
At the Door
Izanagi went down to Yomi and came to the door of the palace where Izanami dwelt. She came out to meet him. From the dark, he called to her:
“My beloved wife, the lands that you and I were making are not yet finished. Come back!”
Izanami answered:
“How I regret that you did not come sooner! I have already eaten from the hearth of Yomi. But, my beloved husband, I am moved that you have come here. I wish to return. I will go and discuss it with the gods of Yomi. Do not look at me.”
The Food of the Dead
Izanami’s words contain a crucial detail: she has eaten the food of Yomi, cooked at its hearth (yomotsu-hegui). In many mythologies, eating the food of the underworld binds one to it. In Greek myth, Persephone must spend part of every year with Hades because she ate pomegranate seeds in the underworld. Izanami, having eaten, now belongs to the dead — unless the gods of Yomi release her.
The Broken Promise
Izanami went back into the palace. Izanagi waited in the darkness. He waited a long time. She did not return.
At last, impatient, Izanagi broke off one of the large teeth from the ornamental comb that held his hair on the left side, lit it as a torch, and went inside.
What he saw was horrifying. Izanami’s body was rotting, swarming with maggots. In the parts of her body, eight thunder gods had been born: a great thunder in her head, a fire thunder in her breast, a black thunder in her belly, a splitting thunder in her genitals, and thunders in her hands and feet.
Izanagi, terrified, turned and fled.
”You Have Shamed Me”
Izanami cried out: “You have shamed me!” (a ni haji misetsu). She sent the Yomotsu-shikome, the “hags of Yomi,” to pursue him.
The Flight
Izanagi ran. As the hags gained on him, he threw down his black vine headdress, and it turned into wild grapes. The hags stopped to eat them. When they caught up again, he broke off the teeth of the comb on the right side of his hair and threw them down, and they turned into bamboo shoots. Again the hags stopped to eat.
Then Izanami sent the eight thunder gods after him, together with an army of 1,500 warriors of Yomi. Izanagi drew his long sword and swung it behind him as he ran — the gesture of warding off pursuers without turning to face them.
At last he reached the foot of the Yomotsu Hirasaka, the slope at the border of Yomi. Growing there was a peach tree. He picked three peaches and threw them at his pursuers, and the army of Yomi fled.
Izanagi said to the peaches: “As you have helped me, so help all the living people of the Central Land of Reed Plains when they are in trouble.” He gave them the name Ōkamuzumi-no-mikoto. The peach, in Chinese and Japanese tradition, was a powerful protection against evil spirits — a belief that also appears in the story of Momotaro, the Peach Boy (see Momotaro: The Peach Boy of Japanese Folklore).
The Boulder
Last of all, Izanami herself came in pursuit. Izanagi took a massive boulder, so large that it would take a thousand men to move it, and blocked the Yomotsu Hirasaka with it. The two gods stood on either side of the rock and faced each other for the last time. They spoke the words of divorce.
Izanami said: “My beloved husband, if you do this, I will strangle and kill a thousand of the people of your land every day.”
Izanagi replied: “My beloved wife, if you do this, I will build fifteen hundred birthing huts every day.”
And so, the Kojiki says, a thousand people die every day, and fifteen hundred are born.
Izanami, Goddess of Death
From that day, Izanami became known as Yomotsu-Ōkami, the great goddess of Yomi. The mother of the islands and the gods became the ruler of the dead. The boulder remained, sealing the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
The Kojiki adds that the Yomotsu Hirasaka is now called Ifuya-zaka in the land of Izumo. At Higashiizumo in Shimane Prefecture, a site marked by large stones is still identified as the place where Izanagi blocked the path. A sign tells visitors the story.
Purification
Izanagi returned from Yomi feeling polluted by his contact with death. He went to purify himself in a river, and from this purification were born the sun goddess Amaterasu, the moon god Tsukuyomi, and the storm god Susanoo.
The idea that contact with death brings kegare (ritual impurity) that must be washed away is central to Shinto. Shinto shrines traditionally avoid anything to do with death; funerals in Japan are usually Buddhist. Visitors to Shinto shrines wash their hands and mouths at the entrance — a small echo of Izanagi’s purification.
Comparisons: Orpheus and Others
The story of Izanagi in Yomi is strikingly similar to the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In both, a grieving husband goes down into the underworld to bring back his dead wife. In both, he is told not to look at her. In both, he breaks the prohibition, and the wife is lost forever (see Orpheus and Eurydice).
The differences are revealing. Orpheus looks back out of love or doubt, and Eurydice fades gently away. Izanagi looks out of impatience, and what he sees is not a vanishing shade but a rotting corpse — the physical reality of death. Izanami does not simply disappear; she becomes his enemy, pursuing him in fury, and declares war on the living.
The flight, with objects thrown behind that turn into obstacles — grapes, bamboo, peaches — is a motif found in folktales all over the world (the “magic flight”), from Russia to Scotland.
Meaning
The story explains several fundamental facts:
- Why people die — because of Izanami’s curse.
- Why more people are born than die — because of Izanagi’s reply.
- Why death is polluting — because of what Izanagi saw.
- Why the dead cannot return — because the boulder blocks the way.
It is also a story about the unbearable nature of death. The first couple of the world, who created everything together, are separated forever by the reality of decay. Love cannot overcome it. The boundary must be sealed.
Last reviewed: September 2026.