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Updated: June 24, 2025
All these islands are the children of Izanagi and Izanami, and when first born were small and feeble, but gradually grew larger and larger, attaining their present size like human beings, which are at first tiny infants. As the gradual separation of the land and sea went on, foreign countries were formed by the congealing of the foam of the sea.
It does not appear that the marriage tie possessed any grave significance in ancient Japan, or that any wedding ceremony was performed; unless, indeed, the three circuits made by Izanagi and Izanami prior to cohabitation round a "heavenly august pillar" be interpreted as the circumambulatory rite observed in certain primitive societies.
As for the idea of blocking the "even pass of hades" with rocks, it appears to mean nothing more than that a military force was posted at Hirasaka now called Ifuyo-saka in Izumo to hold the defile against the insurgent troops under Izanami, who finally took the field against Izanagi. The story of Susanoo lends itself with equal facility to rationalization.
Izanami dies in giving birth to the Kami of fire, and her body is disintegrated into several beings, as the male and female Kami of metal mountains, the male and female Kami of viscid clay, the female Kami of abundant food, and the Kami of youth; while from the tears of Izanagi as he laments her decease is born the female Kami of lamentation.
Whichever theory be correct and the latter certainly commends itself as the more probable it will be observed that both agree in assigning to Takama-ga-hara a terrestrial location; both agree in assigning the sense of "unsettled and turbulent" to the "floating, drifting" condition predicated of the country when the Kami first interested themselves in it, and both agree in interpreting as an insignium of military authority the "jewelled spear" given to Izanagi and Izanami an interpretation borne out by the fact that, in subsequent eras of Japanese history, it was customary for a ruler to delegate authority in this manner.
The above ceremonies are those which are proper only in families of the highest rank, and are by no means fitting for the lower classes, who must not step out of the proper bounds of their position. Seven generations of gods after his time existed Izanagi no Mikoto and Izanami no Mikoto the first a god, the second a goddess.
But the Records and the Chronicles agree in stating that he descended on Kirishimayama* in Tsukushi, which is the ancient name of the island of Kyushu. This is one of the first eight islands begotten by Izanagi and Izanami. Hence the alternative name for Japan, "Land of the Eight Great Islands."
By this pair, Izanagi and Izanami, were produced the islands of Japan, and the generations of the gods, and the deities of the Sun and Moon. Some went to dwell in the blue Plain of High Heaven; others remained on earth and became the ancestors of the Japanese race. Such is the mythology of the Ko-ji-ki and the Nihongi, stated in the briefest possible way.
It was placed under the care of a grandson of the Kami born to Izanagi and Izanami, who is represented as declaring that he "would continue drilling fire for the Kami's kitchen until the soot hung down eight hand-breadths from the roof of the shrine of the Great-Producing Kami and until the earth below was baked to its nethermost rocks; and that with the fire thus drilled he would cook for him the fish brought in by the fishermen, and present them to him in baskets woven of split bamboos which would bend beneath their weight."
In all this he succeeds, and having married Princess Yakami, to whom he was previously engaged, he resumes the work left unfinished by Izanagi and Izanami, the work of "making the land." *Sacred because divine revelations were supposed to be made through a lute-player. In the story of this Kami, we find the first record of conjugal jealousy in Japan.
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