By Nam Sang-so

It was my third year in elementary school in Japan when the teacher taught us how the Japan islands were first created by the deity Izanagi. The teacher based his teaching on Kojiki, the oldest chronicle in Japan.

Izanagi is one of the deities in Japanese mythology and with his spouse/younger sister Izanami gave birth to the islands of Japan. Amaterasu is their daughter and a major deity of the Shinto religion. The emperors of Japan are considered to be the direct descendants of Amaterasu the goddess.

When the teacher taught about Izanagi and Amaterasu and Shinto all the children in the class had to maintain a straight posture. A large painting was hung on the wall depicting Izanagi with a long handled spear standing with Izanami on a floating bridge above the clouds. He stirred the sea water, pulled up his spear dripping drops which were hardened and became islands.

He didn't explain then to the children the following part but the Kojiki records (as translated by a classic researcher Yura Yayoi) that when the two gods stood on one of the islands they had created, Izanami the goddess told her brother. "My body has an unfinished hidden part." "Funny, my body has an unnecessary bulging out thing," said the man and suggested to Izanami that his extra part and her unfinished part of the bodies be united. She was hesitant at first but they joined them and the man and woman produced a new nation, Nippon, or the origin of the sun, now called Japan.

The earnest teacher further expanded his love of Japan by teaching us that Izanagi had drawn the islands in three bow lines ― the Aleutian island, Honshu, and the Okinawa islands ― in order to protect the northern primitives (in the present day Korea peninsula, Manchuria and a part of Russia) from foreign invaders and natural disasters.

On Sept. 26 some 2,670 years after the dawn of history, The Japan Times reported that "It's just a matter of time before Tokyo is struck by the same magnitude of flooding that devastated parts of the northern Kanto region this month, and should the capital remain unprepared it will most likely be annihilated, followed by an unprecedented death toll and economic damage."

The English paper further reported that "with the effects of global warming becoming increasingly obvious, the climatic conditions that triggered torrential rain in Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures is no longer a rarity, and the odds are certain that similar downpours will hit Tokyo."

Japanese seismologists and volcanologists warn that the volcanoes in Japan have entered the strongest upheaval period in a long time and Mt. Fuji is slowly waking up from 300 years of being dormant. The Japan Meteorological Agency is observing 47 active volcanoes. After all, Izanagi really had designed the Japanese islands as a breakwater for natural disasters on the Korean peninsula.

If the Japanese scientists are sure that devastating natural disasters will hit the islands soon, Korea must be prepared to help Japan, not only for being close neighbors and its "hyperbola of love and hatred," but also for the return of Izanami's great favors rendered to the Korean peninsula over the past 2,670 years.

Soon, the Japanese Embassy building in Seoul will be demolished and rebuilt. Isn't it time for Korea, as a first step, to relocate the comfort woman statue sitting in front of the Embassy to one of the parks in the city so that it won't have to keep gazing at the construction site, suffering from cement dust?