Got another glimpse into how women's roles are subjucated in patriarchal and hierarchical Japan through a re-telling of a Japanese creation myth. It isn't the most exciting read, but it provides an insight into ancient society and the pains it has handed down through the generations. It's Natsuo Kirino's 'The Goddess Chronicle' (2008), translated by Rebecca Copeland in 2013. (Reviews here, here and here.)
We hear about Goddess Izanami and God Izanaki who created the islands of Japan out of the water droplets from the end of their spears. Even a goddess, as a female, doesn't get a better life. Izanami also bears an eternal grudge against her husband. The tale of Izanami and Izanaki and how they came to govern world of the living and the underworld is another jibe against 'punishing' women who speak 'out of their place' or didn't fulfill their duties to the satisfaction of their husbands.
Sixteen-year-old Namima is a spirit miko, a shrine maiden in Yomi, the Realm of the Dead. She serves the angry Goddess of the Underworld, Izanami. Previously, in the world of the living on the tiny island of Umihebi, Namima's grandmother was an Oracle in this town, a privileged position, and her older sister Kamikuu as the eldest daughter, serves the realm of light and is destined to be the next Oracle. Namima, as "the impure one", was meant to serve her sister. She wasn't even allowed to eat her sister's leftover food; that had to be thrown away, in an island with people who didn't have enough to eat.
Our island was governed by cruel customs. Food was rationed so only certain families were allowed to bear children, and this right had been decided in generations past. Any family associated with authority, such as those related to the island chief, might produce young.
The island chief required that all unlawful babies be put to death. Babies weren't the only ones. Whenever the chief noticed an increase in the number of old people, they would be rounded up and locked in a hut on the beach where they'd be left to starve to death. Such were the cruel customs on the island of my birth.
Namima rebelled against her fate as the second daughter of her family would 'serve the realm of darkness', to guard dead bodies, and guide the dead, and must not have a union with a man to birth any children. She went against the town's rules, fell in love with a man named Mahito, and fled the island with him. She bore him a daughter on the long sea journey to the bigger islands, and he strangled her to death. She is angry and wants revenge against the man who killed her. So she did. About 20 years or so later, Namima went back to town as a sparrow wasp, only to realize that Mahito had presented his daughter as his youngest sister. In doing that, he doomed her and gave her the destiny as the Priestess of Darkness, and yet ironically saved his family from being ostracized. Mahito had married Kamikuu and had four children with her. Angered, Namima, as a poisonous sparrow wasp, she stung him to death.
The chapters towards the end are a tad confusing. They sharply veer away from the main storyline, and brought us new characters. Finally we meet Inzanaki in his human form as sailor Yakinahiko. This human sailor is immortal and married wives in every town he went, and oddly, most wives died suddenly after childbirth. This was of course, done by Izanami, who promised to take a thousand deaths a day from the land of the living, and she has been choosing the women who have lain with Izanaki.
I'll save you a read. Are you ready for this? The ending chapters reveal a twist of fate, and how it all comes together. Izanaki does an experiment in which his spirit goes into a new body as 19-year-old Unashi. Unashi-Izanaki is now mortal and will die. He meets Yayoi who's been ordered to die by suicide, and takes her away by boat. Izanaki went to Izanami to plead for Yayoi's life. Didn't end well. Izanaki dies anyway and Izanami continues it.
The point is, it never ends the way it is. And the Goddess continues meting out her tasks. She never saw it as 'revenge'. What she has to do, is what her role required her to be, the deity of the underworld who takes the lives of the living. The wheels of Time turn as they do.
I decided not to delve into the matters of feminism and female subjucation in society. I know it but it's not something I want to dwell on for the now. There are plenty of essays and dissertations for me to read if I want to. The language might a tad stilted because that's how the author intended the Goddess and the characters to speak — in their ancient polite manner.
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