Yesterday we heard the story of Izanagi and Izanami creating the world, the islands of Japan, and many of the gods and goddesses. After giving birth to the god of fire, poor Izanami was too badly burnt to live, and she died in her husband’s arms. Izanagi was so angry that he slaughtered the infant god of fire, cutting him up into many new gods. But his grief didn’t end there.

Izanagi was so upset that he determined to travel to the underworld, Yomi, to retrieve his wife. He searched and quickly found her (presumably there weren’t too many dead at this point in history). At this point it was too dark to see her, but he called out to her to come back to the land of the living. Izanami spat at him that he came too late, as she had already eaten the food of the underworld and could no longer return to life.

Izanagi refused to accept this, so he waited until Izanami fell asleep, and snuck up on her to carry her back to the land of the living. When the light of his torch fell upon her face, he was horrified, as she was in a terrible state of decompose, with maggots and worms crawling through her once beautiful face. Izanagi shrieked (wouldn’t you?) and fled, waking up Izanami in doing so. Izanami was so indignant that she sent eight hell-hags after her husband, instructing them to bring him back to live with her forever.

Izanagi fled the underworld and quickly threw a huge boulder over the entrance, keeping the demons and hellbeasts — and his now-hellish wife — trapped in Yomi. Furious, Izanami shrieked out at him that if he left her, she would destroy 1000 lives every day for the rest of eternity. Izanagi replied that if she did that, he would give life to 1500 new lives every day.

Izanagi left his wife forever that day, and went to perform a cleansing ritual to purify himself of having visiting Yomi (and presumably to wash off any bits of his wife that were stuck to him after that traumatic venture). In cleansing himself, the water that fell out of his left eye became the sun goddess, Amaterasu. The water that fell from his right eye became the moon god Tsukuyomi (we heard about him in Inari’s story too). And whatever it was that came out of his nose (yuck!) became Susano’o, the evil storm god.

As for Izanami, she became the queen of the underworld.

Izanami

The Japanese version of hell, or Yomi, isn’t really like the Christian concept of hell. Originally, it was quite similar to the Greek underworld, Hades. After Buddhism came to Japan, Yomi was incorporated into Buddhist cosmology and became one of the many hells one can go to if they’ve been a bad person…

Extra credit to any of you who caught the similarities between the story of Izanagi and Izanami and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Double extra credit to any of you who caught the similarities to the Mayan myth of Itzamna and Ix Chel, the Indian myth of Savitri and Satyavan, or the Sumerian myth of Inanna’s decent into the underworld. Myths are fun!

Anyway, as usual, head on over to Etsy if you’d like to support me by buying a print!

伊弉諾（いざなぎ）は伊弉冉（いざなみ）が死んだ後、大変悲しくて寂しくて、伊弉冉を連れて帰るために黄泉の国に行きました。

伊弉諾は黄泉の国で探し回って、ようやく伊弉冉を見つけました。でも伊弉冉の姿はまったく違っていました。綺麗な顔は腐って、顔に開いた穴からは虫がウニャウニャしていました。伊弉諾はびっくりして逃げました。伊弉冉は怒って、伊弉諾を追いかけました。

伊弉諾は黄泉の国の出口に来た時に、大きい岩を出口に置きました。そのため、伊弉冉は出ることができなくなりました。怒った伊弉冉は「私から離れたら、毎日１０００人を殺します!」と叫びました。伊弉諾は「そうしたら、私は毎日１５００人の人間をつくります！」と言いました。

その後、伊弉冉は黄泉の国の女王になりました。

ギリシア神話には、オルペウスとエウリュディケーと言う物語があります。これは、伊弉諾と伊弉冉の物語ととてもにいています。オルペウスはヘーデース（ギリシアの黄泉）に言って、エウリュディケーを連れて帰りたかったのですが、だめでした。世界でたくさんの国にはこの話とにいている神話があります。どうしてかな？不思議ですね。

Japan’s creation myth is pretty cool. In the beginning, the first gods Kunitokotachi and Amenominakanushi created Izanagi and Izanami and charged them with the creation of the world. They gave the new brother and sister pair a heavenly spear, and Izanagi and Izanami descended to the heavenly floating bridge and plunged the spear into the ocean. The drops which fell off the spear formed into the first land, from which all of the land was formed. A tall pillar also grew out of this mess, and Izanagi and Izanami, being the only gods their age, fell in love and wanted to get married.

The circled around the pillar in opposite directions, kind of winging the wedding ritual, and figured, meh, it was good enough. And they quickly went to business. They had two children, Hiruko (remember Ebisu from the Seven Lucky Gods?) and Awashima, who were born deformed. The higher gods told them that this was because they performed the marriage ceremony improperly (certainly not because they were brother sister!) so they repeated their wedding, this time without screwing up. Afterwards, they had many more children, including the “eight great islands of Japan,” some other islands, and many many gods.

Tragically, Izanami died giving birth to Kagutsuchi, the god of fire; she was burned too badly during the birth. Izanagi was so furious that he killed the baby, creating even more deities in doing so. Afterwards, Izanagi traveled to the underworld to try to retrieve her, but that’s another very interesting story which I will cover later.

Izanagi and Izanami

This print is available on my Etsy store. If you’re interested in buying the original, please email me. Thanks for reading!

Another widely popular kami, Inari is a god of fertility, agriculture, rice, foxes, industry, and worldly success. There are shrines to Inari all over Japan, the most famous one being Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, known for it’s thousands of torii archways. Inari is a patron of blacksmiths and a protector of warriors. In a famous Noh play, Inari helps the legendary blacksmith Munechika forge a great sword. And today, big corporations often have shrines to Inari on the top of their headquarters. (Take an elevated train ride through an urban area and you’re bound to see a number of rooftop shrines; a good number of them may be to Inari.)

Figuring out how to paint Inari was a difficult decision. There’s not really a “standard” appearance — sometimes Inari is depicted as a beautiful young woman, other times as a grizzly old man, other times as a warrior spirit, other times as an androgynous bodhisattva. In some stories, he appears as a snake, a dragon, or a giant spider. Throughout all the depictions though, one constant is foxes. Inari is strongly associated with foxes (kitsune), which is why you’ll see fox statues all over any placed dedicated to him.

Inari’s origins are pretty mysterious too. While he is a completely Shinto deity, he is often identified with other gods and goddesses, including the other gods of agriculture, Benzaiten of the Seven Lucky Gods, and even his wife. In some places, Inari is actually worshiped as a collective of three or five major deities, which over the centuries have included Izanagi and Izanami, the creator deities, and almost a dozen others. We’ll get to some of them later in the series, but that’s just to illustrate Inari’s importance in Shinto. Anyway, for my illustration, I went with the image of Inari as Dakiniten, a goddess imported from Tibetan Buddhism’s dakini — enlightened energy embodied in goddess form.

Inari

Lastly, if you’re a fan of sushi, you must be familiar with inari-zushi, rice inside a pocket of fried tofu. Foxes are said to love fried tofu, which is why the food was named after Inari. Oh yeah, and I wanted to mention Inari’s wife, Ukemochi, one more time, because the story is fantastic:

Ukemochi, a goddess of food, was preparing a feast for the moon god Tsukuyomi. She did this by facing the ocean and spat up a huge fish, then facing the forest, after which a vast herd of game spewed from her anus. Finally she faced a rice paddy and coughed up a big bowl of rice for him. Tsukuyomi was so disgusted he killed her right then and there, but her dead body continued to produce food: millet, rice, and beans sprouted forth from her corpse, and her eyes turned into silkworms.

I wonder what she was going to make for dessert.

This print is available on my Etsy store. If you’re interested in buying the original, please email me. Thanks for reading!

Painting while sick really sucks. Well, doing anything while sick really sucks actually, but fever and exhaustion is no friend to the fine motor skills required for painting. This took me a lot longer than I would have liked it to.

Raijin (雷神) is one of my favorite gods. He is the god of thunder, and is almost always seen with his buddy Fujin. Together they’re two of the most commonly seen images of gods in Japan. I’ve always loved the thunder, and here in Fukui the snow thunder is absolutely spectacular, so that’s part of the reason he’s one of my favorites. Besides his domain, I also just like the way he looks — a chaotic sky demon beating on a ring of drums. Very cool.

Raijin

There’s a famous superstition in Japan that when it thunders you should cover your naval. The awesome explanation behind this is that Raijin will come along and eat your belly button if you don’t. I’ve never seen anyone here cover their navels over here, but come to think of it, I haven’t seen many belly buttons either. I wonder…

Anyway, as always, Raijin is available at my Etsy store, or by emailing me. Thanks for viewing!

Those of you familiar with Mortal Kombat might have heard of today’s kami before, although the game version is quite different from the real one. This is Fujin (風神), the god of the winds. He’s said to be one of the oldest gods, present at the time of Creation when he opened up his bag of winds to clear the morning mists and fill the void between Earth and Heaven.

His appearance is that of a fearsome demon, and in Chinese mythology he and his buddy Raijin (we’ll meet him later) were evil demons who opposed Buddha, but after being defeated by his army, they join his side and have been working as gods since.

While the god of the winds has probably always been a part of Japanese mythology, the imagery we see of Fujin can be traced back to the ancient Greek god of the North Wind, Boreas (from whom we get the words boreal, aurora borealis, and Hyperborea). Boreas carried a magic cloak in which he carried the wind, and he was a very popular god. When Alexander the Great formed his empire, he brought Greek gods and imagery all the way to India’s doorstep, and the cultural reverberations were tremendous. The Greco-Bactrian culture that sprang up in present-day Afghanistan preserved those Greek images long after the dissolution of Alexander’s empire, and eventually merged them with Buddhist iconography, which traveled along the Silk Road to China and then Japan. Pretty cool, huh?

Fujin

I won’t be posting a kami tomorrow or the next day, as I will be traveling to Yokohama for a friend’s wedding. So have a nice weekend and Coming of Age Day (here in Japan), and when I get back I’ll post a new kami very soon. Maybe I’ll get some nice wedding photos too.

This print is available on my Etsy store. If you’re interested in buying the original, please email me. Thanks for reading!

風神は風の神様です。

大きい袋を持っています。この袋から風が出て来ます。

風神の風袋はどこから来たと思いますか？実は、昔のギリシアの神様から来ました。ギリシアでは、風の神様は4人いました。北、南、西、と東。北の風の神様はボレアスと言いました。ボレアスは、大きいマントを持って、マントから冷たい風を出しました。アレクサンドロス3世がインドまで来た時には、ギリシアのアートと文化がシルクロードからインドと中国に行きました。人気なボレアス神様のイメージも行きました。ボレアスのイメージはインドと中国の神様とまざって、その神様も風のマントを使うようになりました。そして、仏教が日本に来た時には、風の袋を持っているイメージは日本の風神に入りました。

面白くないですか？

この絵のプリントは私のEtsy storeか問い合わせフォームから買う事ができます。