Note 4 — Chapter XIX · Rival Deities of Life and Death, Sunshine and Storm

Here Izanagi has broken a taboo, as did the Japanese youth who married the dragon-maid, Abundant Pearl Princess, and as did the husband of Melusina in the French legend. It was an ancient custom in Japan to erect “parturition houses”. These were one-roomed huts to which women retired so as to give birth to children unseen. Ernest Satow tells that on the island of Hachijo, until comparatively recent times, “women, when about to become mothers, were … driven out to the huts on the mountain-side, and according to the accounts of native writers, left to shift for themselves, the result not infrequently being the death of the new-born infant”.4 It was taboo for a man to enter a “parturition house”. Apparently Izanami had retired to a “parturition house” in Yomi.