Wikimedia CommonsCulture
Japanese
Location
Shimane Prefecture, Japan
Key Figures
Izanagi, Izanami, Kagutsuchi
Images via Wikimedia Commons
The Myth
The story as told by the culture
In the Kojiki, after the goddess Izanami died giving birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi, her husband Izanagi descended to Yomi-no-Kuni (the land of the dead) to bring her back. He found her in the darkness and begged her to return. She agreed to ask the gods of the underworld but told him not to look at her.
Izanagi could not wait. He lit a tooth of his comb as a torch and saw that Izanami's body had begun to rot — maggots and thunder deities writhed through her decaying flesh. Horrified, he fled. Izanami, enraged at being seen in this state, sent the hags of Yomi and then the thunder spirits to chase him.
Izanagi reached the slope of Yomotsu Hirasaka — the boundary between the land of the dead and the land of the living — and blocked the passage with a massive boulder (the Chibiki-no-Iwa). From opposite sides of the boulder, the estranged couple spoke their final words: Izanami vowed to kill 1,000 people every day; Izanagi replied that he would cause 1,500 to be born. This is the Japanese mythological origin of death — and of the slight surplus of birth over death that sustains the human population.
The story is one of the most powerful in world mythology — a love story that becomes a horror story that becomes an etiology of mortality itself.
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Myth types
The Place
The physical location today
The traditional site of Yomotsu Hirasaka is identified as Iya, a small area in the town of Higashiizumo in Shimane Prefecture, on the San'in coast of western Honshu. A large boulder at the site is identified as the Chibiki-no-Iwa that sealed the entrance to Yomi.
The setting is appropriately liminal: a quiet, forested area between mountains and sea, neither dramatic nor ordinary — a threshold place. A small shrine marks the spot. The broader Izumo region is Japan's most mythologically dense landscape, with sites associated with nearly every major narrative in the Kojiki clustered within a few dozen miles.
Visit information
Access
Free — publicly accessible; no admission fee
Nearest city
Matsue, Shimane Prefecture
Notes
This is a small, quiet site — not a major tourist attraction. Best visited as part of a broader Izumo mythology tour that includes Izumo Taisha, the Inasa Beach (where Okuninushi negotiated with the gods), and the Hinomisaki Shrine. The atmosphere is contemplative rather than spectacular.
The History
What archaeology and scholarship tell us
The identification of this specific location with Yomotsu Hirasaka is traditional and cannot be archaeologically verified — the Kojiki describes a mythological geography, not a GPS coordinate. However, the concentration of myth-related sites in the Izumo region is not accidental: Izumo was a powerful political and cultural center in prehistoric Japan, possibly the dominant kingdom before the Yamato clan (ancestors of the current imperial family) consolidated power.
The Izanagi-Izanami myth has structural parallels to the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (a lover descends to the underworld to retrieve a dead beloved, fails through looking back) and the Mesopotamian Descent of Inanna. Whether these parallels reflect cultural diffusion or universal human psychology is debated. The Japanese version is distinctive in making the dead spouse not merely lost but actively hostile — and in deriving the fundamental facts of human mortality from a marital quarrel between gods.
Mythological Connections
Nearby Sites
Related Entries
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Cenote Ik Kil
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The cave on Crete where Rhea hid the infant Zeus from his father Kronos — the birthplace of the king of the gods
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The age of the gods — before the creation of Japan
Mythic Grounds acknowledges that many sites documented here are sacred to Indigenous peoples and living cultural communities. We strive to present information respectfully, drawing only from published and authorized sources. If you are a member of a community represented on this site and believe any content is inaccurate or culturally inappropriate, please contact us.