Izanagi

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.

Izanagi remains an actively enshrined kami rather than a purely mythological figure confined to ancient texts. On Awaji Island in Hyogo Prefecture, the traditional site of his retirement after completing the work of creation, Izanagi Jingu enshrines him jointly with Izanami, standing near the place tradition names as his palace and eventual resting place. A second major center of his worship, Taga Taisha in Shiga Prefecture, likewise enshrines both Izanagi and Izanami and appears by name in both the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, the two eighth century chronicles that preserve the creation myth; the shrine became especially well known historically as a place to pray for longevity, and by the late fifteenth century it had also become a popular stop for pilgrims traveling onward to the Ise Grand Shrine. Both sites continue to draw worshippers and visitors today, and the association of Izanagi with the ritual of purification he performed after leaving Yomi, misogi, remains a recognized practice within contemporary Shinto more broadly, carried forward from the god's own founding act of washing away the pollution of death. The shrine's continued standing, alongside Izanagi Jingu on Awaji, shows that his worship was never treated as complete once the creation myth ended; both sites keep him present as an object of ongoing devotion rather than as a figure retired once his story was told.