Question: Do Izanagi and Izanami really seem like gods? As distant Sky and mother of Earth, Fire, and Water, Izanagi and Izanami both seem kind of...Titan-y. What do you think?
Izanagi and Izanami are in a weird place; on the one hand, they have concrete emotional stories of their interactions with each other and their children, and they fulfill important roles in their cosmology, which makes them seem like they should be gods. On the other hand, they're some of the oldest beings in Japanese cosmology, created the world, and are the parents of some of the pantheon's major Titans, which makes them seem like they should be Titans themselves.
We haven't yet done our rewrite of the Amatsukami, so for the moment we just aren't sure where these two will fall. My gut response (and John may disagree) is that Izanami may get to stay, but Izanagi will probably end up having to go, consigned to Sad Sky Titan Land with folks like Ouranos and Anu.
Izanami is the culture's major death god, which is a big point toward her staying off the bat; she performs an extremely important function for humanity, even if humanity, who is not fond of getting murdered and stuffed in a dark hole for all of eternity, is not very happy about it. The story of her marriage to Izanagi, her death in childbirth, and her transformation into an Underworld goddess is a compelling one, and she has several identifiable associated powers, including Death, Darkness and negative Epic Appearance. While she doesn't leave her home (or, more accurately, apparently can't), she's still a pretty vibrant mythological figure despite her older origin.
Izanagi, on the other hand, lacks some of these qualities. While he shares the same myths with Izanami, at the end of them he fulfills his role as a creator deity again, giving birth to Amaterasu, Tsukiyomi and Susanoo, and promptly vanishes forevermore, completely absent from the rest of Japanese myth. While there's an acknowledgment that Izanami is down there in Yomi, doing her thing, there's no corresponding explanation of where Izanagi went or what he's doing. Furthermore, his associations are pretty much nonexistent; his connection to the sky is sketchy at best, and the only thing I can think of to reasonably assign to him is Health, which, as Dian Cecht will tell you, isn't enough to keep someone on the roster around here. He's certainly an important figure to the world's origins, probably too important to be relegated to minor godhood, but he doesn't seem to be doing much after that, and that smells like Titan to me.
So my preliminary guess is that Izanami will probably stay, but that her husband Izanagi will probably become a Titan. But I won't know for sure until we finally get to spend some quality time with the Amatsukami, so until then, their futures remain uncertain.
That's funny, I was thinking about this the other day and had the exact opposite impulse. Izanami may have an advantage in terms of associated powers over her husband, but she still has the same "absent parent of other gods/titans" going on, and her myths also end at the same time. (They do, right?)
ReplyDeletePlus she's got this oppositional attitude to the rest of her pantheon (or, at least, to Izanagi, who seems like he'd be on their side ideologically), and a stated mission to destroy all humanity. I think that's the most damning thing in terms of Titan-evidence, really. Besides "she was in Scion: Hero", what's the reason to treat someone like that any differently than your various Deathy-type Titans that most of the gods spend their energy striving against? (If Izanami has Scions, what does she have them going out to do, wipe out mortals in large batches?)
And there's the last bit that makes me bearish on Izanami: if she's stuck in Yomi, how does she end up with Scions, anyway? (She still needs the biological divine parent's consent to adopt, and with her attitude on being a team player, that seems tough.)
Osiris has the same problem though brent...so do a couple others...possibly Hel, I dont remember.
DeleteHel's a better analogue if you're talking about that last point. Osiris can't sire scions biologically, but presumably he still has positive enough relationships with the rest of his pantheon that he can adopt them.
DeleteI think Hel is an interesting comparison because, even though she continues to have myths, she's also in a lot of ways problematic for the Aesir, and the parallels between her and Izanami can be drawn on a lot of levels, not just being so scary they have to be trapped in their respective Underworlds. I think that it would not turn too many heads to treat Hel the same as her siblings. Her treacheries against the gods are more personal/emotional ones (she doesn't maim Tyr and kill Odin, but her attachment to Baldr snowballs into huge problems all the same) which I think is consistent with the Norse conceptions of what female power looks like, but it's still power leveraged in defiance of the gods.
I think this is interesting to look at: the treatment of death gods and goddesses by gender and what it might imply about the attitudes about sex and death of the societies that wrote these stories. Male death deities (Hades, Osiris, Yama, etc.) being primarily regal, impartial, impersonal figures who fulfill necessary and even positive functions, vs. female death deities (Hel, Izanami, others?) being portrayed as impulsive and ruled by emotion, physically decomposing and grotesque, and basically needing to be quarantined in the Underworld for the benefit of everyone who would otherwise have to interact with them.
Good observation. Ireshkigal fits that mold.
DeleteYeah, Hel's a better comparison, since she and Izanami are both in the same weird can't-leave-underworld, disliked-by-pantheon yet still-having-Scions boat. You make good points, though. I worry about the number of gods that manage to hang onto the Japanese roster once we're done with it.
DeleteIt never says humanity, only that she will kill 1000 residents of the living every day, never humans who were not born yet. however this is a story about how death comes into the world, so her motivations are secondary to the fact that death is created. Also, it is not the living she hates, it is her husband who she kills mortals to spite. Yomi is not thought of as a type of hell were the dead are punished, but like the fields of asphodel and Irkallu, and others, the land of the dead is still the dreary land of the dead,and the dead don't like it very much even if it is peaceful. Also Japan is really big on purity in every aspect of life, and corruption in any form, especially of decomposing flesh is anathema to them.
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