The Story Archive

Izanagi and Izanami

Japanese myth · c. 712 CE · Myth / Legend · Japanese · Medieval

Two deities stir the first island out of the sea and give birth to the land and its gods, until one birth kills the wife. Her husband follows her into Yomi, the land of the dead, where she asks him to wait and not to look at her. The Japanese account of how the living and the dead were divided, and of the taboo on looking.

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