In Japanese mythology, the realm of the dead is called Yomi in the Kojiki.
The Kojiki, compiled in 712 CE, tells how the creator deity Izanagi follows his dead wife Izanami into Yomi. He discovers her transformed state and flees, sealing the entrance behind him. Their separation becomes part of the mythic explanation for death and the boundary between the living and the dead.
Yomi is sometimes translated as the Japanese underworld, but the text does not present it as a simple equivalent of the Christian idea of hell. Its inhabitants are the dead, and its mythology focuses strongly on pollution, separation, and the irreversible character of death.
Yomi is also distinct from Jigoku, the Buddhist hells that became influential in Japan, and from Takama-ga-hara, the high heavenly plain associated with the kami. These terms describe different parts of Japanese religious cosmology.