The Myths of Japan

The Japanese creation myth begins with the emergence of heaven, earth, and seven successive generations of primordial deities.
The last of these generations includes the creator gods Izanagi and Izanami, brother and sister, who become the main protagonists of the myth.
The other deities command Izanagi and Izanami to “give form” to earth, which at this point is a fluid mass of drifting matter. Standing in heaven, the siblings lower a divine halberd into the sea and stir. When they pull it up, clumps of salt drip from the weapon’s tip and form an island called Onogoro. Izanagi and Izanami descend to the island, building on it a temple and a heavenly pillar.

While on the island of Onogoro, Izanagi and Izanami realize that their bodies are different, meaning that they have the ability to produce offspring. The deities decide to circle the island’s heavenly pillar in opposite directions until they meet again, and when they do, Izanami invites Izanagi to bed. They have two children, but both are deformed and lifeless. Confused, Izanagi and Izanami seek the advice of their fellow deities in heaven. They reveal Izanami’s invitation to have been the cause of the malformed children: the man, not the woman, should speak first.

Several explanations have been suggested for this story, but most point to the influence of Chinese philosophy, especially Confucianism, on the court scholars who wrote down the myths in the eighth century. Confucianism was well established among elites in Japan at the time. It emphasized male primacy and accorded women an inferior position in society. The warning against female agency incorporated into the tale of Izanami and Izanagi has to be understood in the context of the society when the myths were written down. The story of Izanami’s stillborn children may also reflect the high rate of premature pregnancies and infant mortality in ancient societies.

Having been taught the ways of proper procreation, Izanagi and Izanami go on to have a great many children.

First, Izanami gives birth to eight islands: Awaji, Shikoku, Oki, Kyushu, Iki, Tsushima, Sado, and Honshu, forming the Japanese archipelago. These eight islands were the lands ruled by the ancient Japanese. Among them, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu make up three of the four main islands of modern Japan; Awaji is located in the Seto Inland Sea between Honshu and Shikoku; and Oki, Iki, Tsushima, and Sado are in the Sea of Japan.

In mythology, Japan is often called “the land of eight islands.” This refers both to the isles first created by Izanagi and Izanami and to an island nation in general; in the latter sense, the number eight is simply a metaphor for “many.”

Izanami later births several smaller islands, many of them in the Inland Sea, completing the archipelago.

With the world ready to be populated, Izanami gives birth to a wide variety of deities, who inhabit the eight divine islands and control the elements. Among these are the gods of wind, water, trees, mountains, and plains, as well as various household deities and other spirits. They spread out into the world, and in turn produce even more deities.

However, while birthing the god of fire, Izanami suffers severe burns. As she writhes in agony, more deities, including those of mining, soil, and agriculture, emerge from her bodily fluids. She dies of her wounds, having given birth to a total of 14 islands and 35 gods.

Devastated by the death of his wife, Izanagi cries, and another deity—the goddess of spring water—emerges from his tears.

After burying Izanami, Izanagi turns toward Kagutsuchi, the fire god who caused the tragedy. Filled with wrath, he pulls his sword and beheads Kagutsuchi with a single swing. Blood drips from the blade onto the ground, producing eight new deities, while eight others emerge from Kagutsuchi’s maimed body. These are the gods of rocks, swords, thunder, flames, waterfalls, and valleys, and their emergence symbolizes the evolution of the world from an idyllic realm into a more complex and dangerous place.

Having returned to the realm of the living, Izanagi seeks to wash off the contamination of the netherworld. He strips off his clothes and cleanses his body by immersing himself in water. New deities spring forth from his discarded attire, and yet more are born as Izanagi washes himself.
Finally, as he rubs his face, three of the most important gods in the Shinto pantheon come into being: Amaterasu, the sun goddess, is born from Izanagi’s left eye; the moon deity Tsukuyomi, lord of the night, from his right eye; and Susanoo, god of the sea and storms, from his nose. The birth of these deities concludes the creation myth.

In the Kojiki, the first written chronicle of Japan, the purification of Izanagi is described as having taken place in the province of Hyuga (present-day Miyazaki Prefecture). When scholars in the eighth century first compiled the myths of Japan in Nara, the capital at the time, they likely chose Hyuga as the scene because it was located far away facing the southeast and was therefore considered the place closest to the rising sun and, by extension, to the realm of the gods. This association with the sun is also seen in the name of the region: Hyuga was the only province in premodern Japan to include the character for “sun” in its name.

Purification remains a central ritual in Shinto, and is performed to cleanse both mind and body before worship. At shrines, this is done by washing one’s hands and mouth at the entrance.

The creation myth is followed by the legend of how the sun goddess Amaterasu sends her grandson Ninigi down from heaven to govern the world.

This series of stories, which establishes the divine lineage of the emperors, begins with Ninigi encountering Konohanasakuya, the Blossom Princess. The two fall in love, and Ninigi decides to ask Konohanasakuya’s father Oyamatsumi, god of the mountains, for her hand in marriage.

Oyamatsumi agrees, but on one condition: Ninigi must marry both Konohanasakuya and her elder sister, the Rock Princess Iwanaga. Ninigi, however, takes only Konohanasakuya, rejecting the less beautiful Iwanaga. Furious, Oyamatsumi reveals that only marrying both of his daughters would have assured Ninigi eternal happiness. Blossoms are beautiful but fleeting, whereas rocks may be dull to look at but last forever. Ninigi’s refusal of Iwanaga means that he has forfeited his immortality. For the ancient Japanese, this fateful choice explained why the emperors, who were considered living deities, had to die like ordinary mortals.

Konohanasakuya soon becomes pregnant with triplets, but Ninigi refuses to believe that the children are his. Konohanasakuya locks herself in a hut and sets fire to it, confident that the children of a deity would be born unharmed no matter what. Three baby boys emerge from the flames together with their mother.

Among the three children of Konohanasakuya and Ninigi are Yamasachi-hiko, who grows up to be a master hunter, and Umisachi-hiko, who becomes an expert fisherman.

One day, Yamasachi-hiko proposes that the two exchange tools for a while to get to know each other’s trades. Yamasachi-hiko sets out to fish with his brother’s hook, while Umisachi-hiko tries his hand at hunting. But Yamasachi-hiko loses the hook he has borrowed and cannot find it, no matter how hard he tries. He breaks up his sword and makes many new hooks, but Umisachi-hiko refuses to accept them.

The despairing Yamasachi-hiko is visited by an old man named Shiotsuchi, who tells him to board a boat and search at the palace of Wadatsumi, god of the sea. Yamasachi-hiko does as he is told, and upon his arrival at the palace meets Princess Toyotama, Wadatsumi’s daughter. The two fall in love, and Wadatsumi approves of their relationship because of Yamasachi-hiko’s divine lineage. Yamasachi-hiko is invited to a grand feast and eventually marries Toyotama. The two live together happily for three years.

As time passes, Yamasachi-hiko grows worried. He remembers the reason he set out to sea in the first place: to recover his brother’s lost fishing hook. Toyotama asks her father to help with the search. Wadatsumi orders all the fish in the sea to assemble at his palace so that the hook Yamasachi-hiko is looking for can be found. The fish all come, except for the sea bream, which is said to have hurt its mouth. Wadatsumi calls for the sea bream, whose pain is found to be caused by a stuck fishing hook that Yamasachi-hiko recognizes to be his brother's.

Having recovered his brother’s lost hook, Yamasachi-hiko determines to return to dry land. As a parting gift, Wadatsumi gives him a pair of orbs with which to control the tides.
Yamasachi-hiko attempts to return the fishing hook to Umisachi-hiko, who still refuses to accept it and threatens his brother. Yamasachi-hiko uses the orbs given to him by the god of the sea and calls in the tide, almost drowning Umisachi-hiko, who finally relents.

Several Shinto shrines in coastal Miyazaki enshrine the characters of this tale as deities. One of these sanctuaries is Aoshima Shrine, where an annual winter festival reenacts the scene of Yamasachi-hiko’s return from the sea god’s palace and his welcoming at shore by a delighted crowd. Participants wearing only loincloths rush into the cold waves to greet the deity and undertake a ritual purification.

Having subdued his brother, Yamasachi-hiko receives joyful news: Toyotama tells him that their child will be born soon and that Yamasachi-hiko should build a hut for her to give birth in. She says that this structure should be on land, because a descendant of the gods of heaven must not be born in the sea.

Yamasachi-hiko starts building a hut for his wife, but she goes into labor before the roof, made of cormorant feathers, can be completed. Toyotama enters the hut and implores Yamasachi-hiko not to look at her before the baby is born. Yamasachi-hiko, however, cannot resist the temptation, and sees Toyotama, the daughter of the sea, transformed into a giant shark. Her true form revealed, Toyotama returns to the sea in anguish, leaving her newborn baby behind. The child receives the unfortunate name of Ugayafukiaezu, or “the one for whom the cormorant-feather roof was not finished in time.”
He is brought up by Toyotama’s sister Tamayori, whom he marries after reaching adulthood.

Ugayafukiaezu is enshrined as a Shinto deity at Udo Shrine in the city of Nichinan. According to local beliefs, the coastal cave that houses Udo Shrine is his birthplace.

Ugayafukiaezu and his wife Tamayori have four sons. When they grow up, the youngest son takes his brothers on a quest to conquer all of Japan. They head eastward from Hyuga (present-day Miyazaki Prefecture), battling and defeating many enemies, until they reach a place in what is now Nara Prefecture. There the youngest son establishes a government and declares himself Emperor Jimmu, the first ruler of Japan by divine right. Being descended from the sea god on his mother’s side and from the deities of the sky and mountains on his father’s side, he is destined to rule over all the earth.

He is the first emperor in the traditional order of succession, which claims an unbroken line of rule from Jimmu to the present 126th Emperor. There are many Shinto sites enshrining or otherwise associated with Jimmu in Miyazaki. The most prominent of these is Miyazaki Shrine.