SOURCE: Fuminobu Murakami, "Incest and Rebirth in Kojiki," in Monumenta Nipponica: Studies in Japanese Culture, Vol. 43, No. 4, Winter, 1988, pp. 455-63.

In the excerpt that follows, Murakami grapples with the role of incest in the Kojiki, arguing that it is integral to the text's notion of eternal life.

In Kojiki…, Izanami … is referred to as an imo…, a term meaning both wife and younger sister in ancient Japanese, and scholars have generally considered this to mean that she was only the wife, and not the sister, of Izanagi….¹ The first scholar to suggest an incestuous union between the two was Oka Masao …, who claimed that the tale of Izanagi and Izanami is based on a myth about an incestuous brother-sister union that is common in Southeast Asia, Central India, and other Asian regions.² According to this myth, long ago there was a great flood that exterminated all mankind with...