Misogi is the Shinto practice of ritual purification by water, the washing away of kegare, pollution, defilement, the spiritual grime that adheres to a person through contact with death, illness, wrongdoing or simply the wear of ordinary life. In Shinto, purity is the central religious value and its opposite, pollution, the chief obstacle to right relation with the kami, the divine presences of the tradition; misogi is the means by which purity is restored. In its fullest form the practitioner immerses the body in the sea, a river, a waterfall or a spring, often reciting prayers, the cold and cleansing water carrying away the accumulated impurity and returning the person to a state fit to approach the kami.
The practice is traced in Shinto mythology to the creator deity Izanagi, who, after journeying to the polluting land of the dead in search of his wife, purified himself in a river on his return, and from whose washing, the myth tells, some of the greatest kami were born, including the sun goddess Amaterasu. Misogi thus re-enacts a primordial act of cleansing at the very origin of the divine order.