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Key Details
Type
UnderworldMythology
Japanese Pantheon
Realm
Mythological / Non-physical
About This Location
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.
Primary Sources
“Izanagi said: I have been to a most unpleasant land, a horrible, unclean land.”
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