Japanese PantheonUnderworld
Yomi
The shadowy land of the dead ruled by Izanami, from which Izanagi barely escaped after seeing his wife's decayed form.
About Yomi
The closed land of the dead
Yomi is the polluted underworld Izanami goes to after dying in childbirth. Izanagi follows, sees her corpse, and flees; she vows to kill a thousand a day, he to deliver fifteen hundred. The Kojiki makes the boundary a boulder at Yomotsu Hirasaka. There is no tourist map and little later cult of Yomi as a place you visit. Pollution (kegare) and the need for purification (misogi) are the ritual lesson. It is a sealed country.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Kojiki (Yomi episode)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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