In Japanese mythology, Yomi is the underworld where Izanami becomes its ruler.
The story appears most famously in the Kojiki, Japan’s oldest surviving collection of myths, completed in 712. After giving birth to the fire deity Kagutsuchi, Izanami dies and travels to Yomi. Her husband, Izanagi, follows her and asks her to return to the world of the living.
Izanami warns Izanagi not to look at her, but he eventually sees her transformed corpse. He flees, and Izanami pursues him to the entrance of Yomi. Izanagi blocks the passage with a large boulder, ending their marriage and separating the living from the dead. Yomi is often translated as the “Land of the Dead,” though its exact nature differs from later Christian ideas of hell.
Yomi is sometimes confused with Ne-no-Kuni, another otherworld in Japanese mythology. Some traditions and modern interpretations overlap the two, but the names are not simply interchangeable in every source.