The last of the seven generations of the age of the gods, brought into being paired with Izanagi. Standing on the floating bridge of heaven, they stirred the sea with a jewelled spear, made the island of Onogoro, descended to it, and there gave birth to the land and to the gods.
She bore the islands of Japan themselves. But when she bore the fire god Kagutsuchi last of all, she was burned and died. The line of the story sets bearing and dying directly against each other.
Izanagi went down to bring his wife back. She told him she had already eaten the food of that land, but would ask its gods — and that meanwhile he must on no account look at her, and went inside.
Unable to wait, he broke a tooth from his comb for a torch and looked. What he saw was a body crawling with maggots, with thunder gods risen in it. Shamed, she sent the hags of the underworld after him.
Fleeing to the pass between the worlds, Izanagi blocked it with a boulder that a thousand men could not move. Across that stone the two spoke the words of their parting.
She said: then I will strangle a thousand of the people of your land each day. He answered: then I will raise fifteen hundred birth huts each day. This is told as the origin of human death, and of human birth. Japanese myth places the beginning of dying and the beginning of being born inside a single exchange.
Generation, and death. Hana-no-Iwaya Jinja in Kumano is held to be her burial place, and Iya Jinja and Mount Hiba in Shimane keep associations with her. At the site identified as the pass of the underworld in Matsue, the blocking stone is venerated still.
The god who gives birth becomes the god of the land of the dead. It is the greatest reversal in Japanese myth.
A stick going to rot: a surface darkened through, a branch hollowing out inside, wood damp and returning to the soil.
The Bureau sends this kami down on sticks that are ending. Anything wholly collapsed cannot be appraised. What belongs here is a stick still holding its shape while plainly past the point of return.
Note: this section is the Bureau's own reading, not a record from the chronicles.
The share of issued certificates in which this kami appeared. It shifts as more sticks are appraised. Variant spellings are reconciled before counting.
No published certificate bears this kami yet.