Izanami ('He/She who Invites') is the female progenitor who, together with Izanagi, forms the islands and gives birth to the deities [S1]. In the Kojiki, she dies in giving birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi, her body consumed by the fire of childbirth [S1]. Grief-stricken, Izanagi descends to Yomi to bring her back; finding her decayed and attended by 'the eight devils of rotting,' he flees, and the two are separated at the threshold—the origin of the divide between the clean world of the living and the polluted realm of the dead [S1]. Thereafter Izanami is associated with Yomi and with death, while Izanagi remains with the living and heavenly realms [S1][S2]. She thus spans creation and mortality, a pivotal figure in Japanese eschatology.