Case file · Folklore / legend
Yomotsu Hirasaka, the slope to the land of the dead
The Kojiki (712) tells how the god Izanagi went down to Yomi, the land of the dead, to fetch his wife Izanami, fled from her rotting form and sealed the passage with a great boulder at Yomotsu Hirasaka.
712 CE · 35.45, 133.14 · status: legend
The account
Izanami, having eaten at Yomi's hearth, could not return. Pursued by the hags of Yomi, Izanagi blocked the slope, and the two gods exchanged curses of death and birth. A site at Higashiizumo, near Matsue, is marked as the slope.
The sceptical view
Myth; the site is a commemorative place.