The Spear That Made an Island: Izanagi and the Failed Rescue From Yomi

Izanagi and his sister wife Izanami are the primordial creator kami of Japanese mythology, and their story opens the Kojiki, Japan's oldest surviving chronicle, compiled in 712 CE. Standing on the floating bridge of heaven, the pair stirred the primeval brine below with a jeweled spear, and the salt that dripped from its tip as they lifted it formed the first island, Onogoro, on which they descended to live and to give birth to the other islands of Japan and to a great many kami. Their creative partnership ended in grief: Izanami died giving birth to the fire kami Kagutsuchi, and Izanagi followed her into Yomi, the land of the dead, hoping to bring her back. Finding her already decayed and enraged that he had broken his promise not to look at her, Izanagi fled Yomi and sealed its entrance behind him with a great boulder. Returning to the world of the living, he performed a purification ritual in a river to cleanse himself of the pollution of death, and as he washed his face, three of the most important kami in Japanese religion were born: Amaterasu the sun goddess from his left eye, Tsukuyomi the moon kami from his right eye, and Susanoo the storm kami from his nose. That single act of purification is regarded within Shinto tradition as the origin of misogi, ritual cleansing by water, practiced in some form down to the present day.