The Land of Yomi and the Purification — The Birth of the Three Noble Children
Izanagi no Mikoto could not resign himself to the loss of Izanami no Mikoto, who had died in giving birth to the fire god. "Beloved wife, the land we two were making is not yet finished." He went down to Yomi, the land where the dead dwell. When he called to her through the door of her hall, a beloved voice answered from the darkness: "I have already eaten the food of Yomi. Yet I will go and speak with the gods of this land. While I do, you must on no account look upon me."
But Izanagi could not wait. He lit a flame on a tooth of the comb in his hair and peered into the darkness. There lay his wife, changed beyond all knowing — maggots swarming over her body, eight thunder gods coiled about her. As her husband fled in terror, Izanami cried, "You have put me to shame!" and sent the hosts of Yomi in pursuit. Izanagi threw down his hair-vine and his comb to buy time, and hurled peaches to drive off his pursuers.
At Yomotsu Hirasaka, the slope that bounds this world and the land of the dead, Izanagi blocked the way with a boulder that a thousand men could scarcely move. Across the rock his wife spoke: "Beloved, if you do this, I will strangle a thousand of your land's people in a single day." Her husband answered: "Beloved wife, then I will build fifteen hundred birthing-huts in a day." It is a tale of origins — of why people die, and why more are ever born than die. A variant account in the Nihon Shoki tells that at this moment Kukurihime no Kami appeared and spoke some word, and that Izanagi praised her. What she said is not recorded; but as the mediating deity who stood between the two, Kukurihime — true to her name, from kukuru, to bind together — came to be revered as a goddess who ties the bonds of en.
Returned from Yomi, Izanagi said, "What a defiled land I have visited," and performed misogi harae, purification in water, at Awakihara by the river-mouth of Tachibana in Himuka of Tsukushi. As he cast off all he wore and sank himself into the water, god after god came into being. Misogi became the wellspring of Japanese purification — the cleansing of death's defilement that brings forth new life.
And at the last, when he washed his left eye, Amaterasu Ōmikami came into being; when he washed his right eye, Tsukuyomi no Mikoto; and when he washed his nose, Susanoo no Mikoto. Izanagi rejoiced: "Many children have I begotten, and at the end I have gained three noble ones." He entrusted Takamanohara to Amaterasu Ōmikami, the realm of night to Tsukuyomi no Mikoto, and the sea-plain to Susanoo no Mikoto. So the journey to the land of death closes with the birth of light.
Kukurihime no Kami, who mediated between the two gods at Yomotsu Hirasaka, is the principal deity of Shirayamahime Jinja and is revered as a goddess of en-musubi. Kumano Hongū Taisha and Dewasanzan Jinja, holy grounds of the faith of yomigaeri — rebirth through the lands of death and renewal — carry the world of this myth into the present day.
IshikawaShirayamahime Shrine
Head shrine of sacred Mount Hakusan, enshrining Kukurihime, goddess of reconciliation.
WakayamaKumano Hongu Taisha
Sacred ground of rebirth — the heart of the three grand shrines of Kumano.
YamagataDewa Sanzan Shrine
Haguro, Gassan, Yudono — a journey of rebirth across three sacred mountains.