What is the name of the underworld in Shinto mythology? Yomi is the land of the dead in Shinto mythology.
Yomi is best known from the Kojiki’s story of Izanami and Izanagi. After Izanami dies giving birth to the fire deity Kagutsuchi, she goes to Yomi. Izanagi follows her and asks her to return, but she has already eaten food there and cannot simply come back to the world of the living. After seeing her transformed state, he flees, and Izanami pursues him.
At the entrance to Yomi, Izanagi blocks the passage with a massive boulder. The episode explains the permanent separation between the living and the dead, while also linking death with kegare, or ritual pollution, in Shinto thought. Yomi is ruled by Izanami in her form as Yomotsu-Ōkami, the great deity of Yomi.
Yomi is sometimes loosely called a hell, but that is misleading. It is a gloomy realm of the dead, not primarily a place of moral punishment. It is also distinct from Buddhist hells such as Jigoku and from the heavenly realm of Takamagahara.