Izanami is the primordial goddess who, with her brother-consort Izanagi, descends to the island of Onogoro to create the land of Japan and the gods who inhabit it. Their generative work ends in tragedy: giving birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi burns her fatally, and she departs for Yomi, the land of the dead.
Grieving, Izanagi follows her into the underworld. Izanami meets him at the threshold and warns him not to look at her, but he lights a fire and sees her corpse crawling with maggots and encircled by eight thunder deities. He flees in horror; humiliated, Izanami sends the hags and thunders of Yomi after him, and finally pursues him herself. Izanagi blocks the pass with a massive boulder, and from opposite sides of that stone the two speak their last words:
愛也吾夫君，言如此者，吾當縊殺汝所治國民日將千頭
“My dear Lord and husband, if thou sayest so, I will strangle to death the people of the country which thou dost govern, a thousand in one day.” — Nihon Shoki, Book I; English tr. W. G. Aston, Nihongi (1896)
Izanagi answers that he will cause fifteen hundred to be born each day — the mythic origin of mortality and birth existing in permanent, uneasy balance. Izanami remains in Yomi as its ruling goddess, Yomotsu-Ōkami, cut off forever from the world of light. The Kojiki locates her tomb at Mount Hiba, on the border of ancient Izumo and Hōki, a site still associated with her worship.
