Medusa to Izanami no hikaku kenkyu shiron

This article, published in the annual Journal of Department of Literature, Faculty of Letters of Kokugakuin University, focuses on the shifting connotation of Izanami and Medusa from beings related to the cult of the Great Mother to beings connected with the world of death. The investigation takes into account the main ancient literary sources such as the Hesiod’s Theology, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pausanias’s Description of Greece, the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki. Besides the written sources also the archaeological studies of Marija Gimbutas are included in the reference bibliography. The methodology is partially based on the comparative studies of Asian and Eurasian myths (e.g. Yoshida Atsuhiko), but the focus is in the range of thematology, aiming to point out some characteristics in the representation of the absolute Otherness, i.e. the world of Death, through the abjection and spacial liminality of Medusa and Izanami in their respective cultural horizons, codified through aberrant metamorphoses and visual taboo, both with the meaning of boundary between Chaos and Cosmos.