time deciding on where to start. It seems simple to just say let's start at the
beginning, but...When is the beginning? With history, everything depends on what comes
before it until the beginning of time How do you explain a point in history
without explaining what happened before that led to that point. It's like when
you try to clean your room. Well why don't I start by cleaning my desk? There's a bunch of stuff in there that I can put in my closet.
Man, you can't, your closet is
totally full. Okay then I'll just clean my closet first. There's a bunch of stuff
in there that I can put in my drawers. Dude your drawers are full of crap too.
Fine! Then I'll clean out my drawers first. There's a bunch of stuff in there
that I can put in my desk. You just said you hadn't cleaned your desk yet. Arghhh! Luckily the Japanese creation myth gives us a good place to start.
It is a legend about
how the Japanese islands formed. It is a story that involves two gods:
Izanagi and Izanami. Now before we go too far,
we need to take a little tangent. The word "god" is just a common English translation of the Japanese word "Kami." It's a crappy translation.
Kami means something closer to spirit or
phenomenemon. Phenonenon. Phenomemo-- Amazing event! Shinto is Japan's oldest
religion and is one of its two major religions, the other being Buddhism. Shinto is all about the worship of kami.
A kami can be almost anything. If you can think of anything remotely interesting in life, there's probably
a kami for it. For example, Amaterasu is the kami of
the Sun. The kami of rain controls the rain.
People after they die eventually become kami. These ancestral kami hang around the
family and they are revered and honored, especially in aristocratic families. Kami can also be interesting objects. For example, if there is a large
impressive looking tree in a village, the people of the village may say, "Hey, that's a big weird tree.
It's probably a kami.
Let's worship it and hope it protects our village." That Cheeto that looks like Harambe that sold for a hundred
thousand dollars on eBay, probably a kami. A kami can be good or mischievous,
and people may worship the mischievous ones to prevent them
from doing bad things. Alright, now that we know what a kami is, back to our story about Izanagi and Izanami. There are other kami that were
born before them, but they won't be in this video because...
It's my video and I
can do what I want. Shut up. Shut up! The myth of the creation of Japan. The entire world was covered by a large sea.
The two kami, Izanagi and Izanami, brother and sister, thrust their spear into the water and swirled it around. They pulled the spear back up and some mud dropped down into the water,
forming an island. The two kami descended to live on the island. They eventually fell in love and got married.
Yes, they're brother and sister. No, they're not Lannisters. They gave birth to eight children, the eight main islands of Japan. Yeah I know Japan's bigger than that, but in ancient times the other islands were not part of Japan.
This also answers the question asked in the beginning of the video. Yes, Japan did come from secks between two gods. Then, because birth control was not yet invented, they gave birth to many many kami, representing the mountains, valleys,
winds, rivers and other natural features of Japan. However, when Izanami gave birth
to the fire kami, she was critically burned and laid dying.
As Izanagi knelt there crying,
his tears created even more kami, and Izanami also continued to
create more, until she died and went to the underworld. Izanagi was stricken with grief
and traveled to the underworld to get his baby mama back. Izanami greeted him from the shadows and said, "I'll beg the kami of the underworld
to release me, but promise, you won't look at me." And he said, "Okay." But later he could not resist
and lit a torch to see her face. He saw that his once beautiful
wife was now a rotting corpse with maggots and foul creatures on her face.
In a total d!*Ck move, Izanagi ran away from his dead wife because she was ugly. Izanami gave chase along with her crew of kami. Izanagi reached the land of the living and covered the entrance to the underworld
with a big ol' boulder. His wife screamed from the other side, "I will kill a thousand people every day if you leave!" He yelled back, "Then I will create one thousand
FIVE hundred people everyday and that is why, the story goes, everyday, one thousand people die and
one thousand FIVE hundred people are born and those numbers hold true to this day.
Back in the land of the living, Izanagi took a bath to purify himself of the dead. More kami emerged from his
discarded clothing and his bath. Seriously, these two can't even sneeze
without creating more kami. Imagine if it was like that for us.
Ah...Ah...Ah... CHOO! Oh no, not again. Daddy? I can't, I can't do this anymore. I have ten other kami in the house,
I cannot afford any more! Well maybe you should have thought about that before you brought another kami into the world.
It's irresponsible. Look, I did it for the tax credit at first, but it's getting ridiculous. So now you just kick me out
into the streets? I'll show you! Ah! Ah-choo! Ah-choo! Ah-choo! Ahem. When Izanagi washed his left eye,
the kami of the Sun was created: Amaterasu.
When he washed his right eye,
the kami of the moon was created: Tsukiyomi. When he washed his nose, the kami
of the sea and storms was created: Susanoo. Amaterasu is the most important kami here, and it is said that all Japanese emperors
descended from her. This is all very convenient to Japanese emperors, who used this belief in divine
ancestry to legitimize their power.
Alright guys, we'll stop here. Next episode, we will jump into the real world to see what Japan was like in prehistory. Who were the first people to settle in Japan? Were they aliens? Come back and find out!.
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