Creator Goddess Who Became Queen of the Dead
Izanami, last of the seven divine generations together with Izanagi, helped churn the primordial sea into land and bore the eight great islands along with gods of mountains, rivers, winds, and sea. Delivering the fire god Kagutsuchi she was fatally burned; even as she lay dying, deities of mining, clay, and irrigation issued from her body. The Kojiki says she was buried on Mount Hiba, on the border of Izumo and Hoki.
When Izanagi came down to Yomi to bring her back, she replied that she had already eaten food cooked on the hearth of the dead and begged him not to look at her while she conferred with the gods of Yomi. He broke the taboo and saw her corpse crawling with maggots, eight thunder gods lodged in it. Shamed and enraged, she sent the hags of Yomi and then the thunder gods after him. At the pass of Yomotsu Hirasaka, blocked by a great boulder, she vowed to strangle a thousand of his people every day; he answered that he would raise fifteen hundred birthing huts daily. That exchange, fixing the rhythm of death and birth, made her Yomotsu Okami, great deity of the underworld.
Tradition places Yomotsu Hirasaka at Iya in Higashi-Izumo, Shimane, where Iya Shrine venerates her, while Hananoiwaya Shrine in Kumano marks the burial site named in a Nihon Shoki variant.
