Izanagi, whose name translates roughly to the male who invites, is the primordial creator of Japanese mythology, and his story is recorded in the Kojiki of 712 and the Nihon Shoki of 720, texts commissioned by the imperial court to trace the emperor’s lineage back to the gods. This episode follows his biography from the moment he and his sister-wife Izanami stir a jeweled spear into a formless, jellyfish-like ocean to form the first island, through the failed marriage ritual that produced the boneless leech child, to the corrected ritual that gave birth to the eight great islands of Japan and the deities of sea, wind, mountain, and river.

The conversation then turns to tragedy: Izanami’s fatal burns while giving birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi, Izanagi’s grief-fueled killing of his newborn son, and his descent into Yomi to bring his wife back. It explores the broken taboo against looking, the horrifying sight of her decaying body, the chase in which a hair vine, a comb, and three peaches hold off the forces of the underworld, and the boulder that seals the pass while husband and wife exchange vows of a thousand deaths and fifteen hundred births each day. The episode ends with the river purification that births Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susanoo, and with Izanagi’s withdrawal once the world can govern itself.

• Why the female speaking first in the marriage ritual caused a cosmic error
• How the Shinto concept of kegare, or defilement, shaped real funeral and illness taboos
• Why peaches were believed to ward off evil in ancient East Asian tradition
• The demographic math behind the standoff at the boulder
• How the sun goddess’s birth cemented the political authority of the emperors