Izanagi and Izanami

The Kojiki, the Japanese record of ancient matters (8th century A.D), records that in the beginning all was chaos. Three deities appeared, and soon afterwards, mysteriously vanished. The new born earth drifted like a jellyfish and floated like oil. Something that resembled a reed shoot sprang up and produced two more deities, and also like the three before them, they too disappeared. A further six generations of divinities came into existence. The last of these were the primal couple, Izanagi (the male who invites) and Izanami (the female who invites).

The other deities directed Izanagi and Izanami to solidify the earth, and so, the primal couple stood upon the floating bridge of heaven and stirred up the earth substance with a jeweled spear. They lifted up the spear and the generated substance dripped from it’s tip, and solidified into an island named Onogoro. The primal couple descended onto the newly formed land and built a palace of eight fathoms (eight is the sacred Japanese number), and they also erected a heavenly pillar.

Afterwards, Izanagi and Izanami compared their bodies, and noticing their physical differences, they decided to unite. They devised a marriage ritual which involved a perambulation of the heavenly pillar. Izanagi proceeded to circulate the pillar in a clockwise direction, while Izanami went around the pillar in an anti-clockwise direction. finally they met, exchanged vows and came together. because Izanami spoke before her husband, their first child was born ritually impure, and so they placed him in a basket, abandoning him to the ocean. They repeated the ceremony correctly — This time Izanagi spoke first — and again they came together, giving birth to the eight Japanese islands.

Subsequently, Izanami gave birth to an array of deities, or ‘Kami’, the last of these Kami was the fire deity Kagutsuchi, who burnt Izanami’s genitals so badly, she died. After her death, Izanami went to reside in Yomi, the Japanese underworld. Full of rage, Izanagi beheads the fire god, and numerous deities are born from his corpse.

Izanagi then visited Yomi, to ask his wife to return with him. however, Izanami had eaten the food of Yomi. She told her husband to wait while she discussed the matter with the underworld gods, and warned him not to look at her. Unable to resist, Izanagi broke the tooth (called wo-bashira, meaning ‘male pillar’) from his hair comb , lit is as a torch, and gazed upon her rotting corpse. Horrified, Izanagi fled, and Izanami sent raging female demons in pursuit. Izanagi managed to evade these demons, so Izanami sent thunder deities and warriors to attack him.

Izanagi finally reached the entrance of yomi, and Izanami, transforming herself into a demon, hastened towards him. Izanagi sealed the entrance to the underworld with a large boulder, and the primordial couple met, for the last time, on the threshold of death and life, and officially disolved their marriage ties.

Okuninushi

According to the Japanese Izumo Cycle, the hero Okuninushi had 80 brothers who were jealous of his marriage to the princess Ya-gami-himi, and so, plotted to kill him.

After telling Okuninushi to help them hunt a huge boar, they heated a large rock and pushed it down a mountainside to wards their brother below. Thinking that is was the boar, Okuninushi attempted to catch it and was burnt to death. his mother, filled with grief, appealed to the gods and he was restored to life again.

The Eighty brothers made a second attempt to take Okuninushi’s life, by crushing him in the fork of a tree. Again his mother appealed to the Kami, and Okuninushi was brought back to life.

She then set Okuninushi to Yomi, the Japanese realm of the dead, to seek the counsel of Susa-no-o who now dwelt in the underworld, after his exile from heaven. In Yomi, Okuninushi fell in love with Suseri-hime the daughter of Susa-no-o, and so they married.

Susa-no-o was angered by their union and, like the eighty brothers before him, attempted to kill Okuninushi. Susa-no-o made Okuninushi sleep in a room full of venomous snakes, but he was protected by a magical scarf Suseri-hime had provided for him. Again, Susa-no-o put Okuninushi in another room, this time full of bees and centipedes, but as before, the scarf protected him from harm.

Then Susa-no-o fired and arrow into the middle of a vast field and told Okuninushi to retrieve it. While Okuninushi searched for the arrow, Susa-no-o set the field alight. Surrounded by a wall of fire Okuninushi was trapped and could find no way to escape. It was then that a mouse told Okuninushi to stamp a hole into the hollow ground. He did so, and hid beneath the ground as the fire swept overhead. the mouse recovered the arrow and gave it to Okuninushi, which the hero then returned to Susa-no-o.

After these events, Susa-no-o’s hostility to wards his son-in-law began to decline, and one day he asked Okuninushi to clean his hair, which was terribly infested with centipedes. While Okuninushi cleaned Susa-no-o’s hair, the god fell asleep, and the hero saw his chance to escape death’s realm, along with his beautiful bride. He tied Susa-no-o’s hair to the rafters of his palace, and taking Susa-no-o’s powerful bow, sword, and enchanted Koto, he set off with Suseri-hime upon his back. By the time Susa-no-o had managed to untangle his hair from the rafters and reach the border of Yomi, the couple were already in the land of the living. Susa-no-o shouted to Okuninushi that if he was ever to defeat his eighty brothers he must use the weapons he had taken. and that was what Okuninushi eventually did.