Are all creation myths this messed up?

Feast or famine time again with me and the blog, it seems.
Please note this entry is long and boring and probably of interest to about three people on the planet (including me) and I doubt they’re reading this blog. Feel free to skip right over this one - I’m talking to you, Mother!
I’m just done reading a book about the creation myths of Japan. Only about sixty or seventy years ago, these stories were taught as fact in History Class in Japanese schools.
I found it really interesting to see how people explained the formation of the islands of Japan, the people and Gods who inhabited them, and the reason why the Emperor was revered as a God until not that long ago.
Bear in mind that I am still in Da Vinci code mode. The similarities were striking, especially in the way that in both the bible and the Japanese creation myth, women seem to be blamed for the downfall from a more perfect state. Do you think this misogynistic trend might have something to do with the fact that it was usually the men who wrote the stories?
In the Japanese creation myth, at a time when the world was basically a swirling soup of energy, the Gods started to bring beings to life. The seventh generation of these beings was Izanagi and his sister / wife, Izanami. Ed. note: Notice how the numbers seven and three always seem to come up, no matter what the cultural background.
So Izangai and Izanami took a great lance to the gloop and started to form the first of the eight great islands of Japan. While working, they talked. Izanami pointed out, quite politely, that she had a part of her body that was under-formed. Izanagi replied that he had a part of his body that was over-formed. Naturally, they thought to join these two parts together and created a child.
This first child however was a leech baby. Confused and horrified they went to the Gods who explained that because the woman had spoken first (can you say second-class citizen?) the child had come out bad. The man must be the first to speak or all will be lost.
So at their next coupling, Izanagi spoke first and they bore many children. Izanami gave birth to all the islands of Japan, their deities and the people living there. But on bearing the fire God, she got terribly burnt. She lay sick and dying, but she wasn’t done yet. Her faeces created ore, her urine water, her blood something else I can’t remember, and so on, and so on.
Eventually she died.
Izanagi was lost without her and went to Yomi, the land of the dead, to look for her. He called her out. She appeared at the gates of the underworld and said she would ask the Gods’ permission to come back to earth. She went back inside Yomi and gave strict instructions for Izanagi not to follow her. Of course he didn’t listen.
On entering, he saw her lying prostrate, being eaten by maggots and tortured by demons. She was so ashamed and angry with him seeing her like this (without her makeup on or anything) she called on the hags of hell and thunder to chase after him and kill him.
Failing in their task, she decided to go after him herself.
Coming upon him in her anger, she vowed that she would divorce him. Not only that, but to punish him for his contravention she would see to it that every day 1000 of his people in Japan would die. Izanagi retorted that if she did that, he would simply ensure that 1500 people were born every day to replace them. Ed note again: If they were still teaching this in schools, they’d have a tough time explaining Japan’s shrinking population and the lowest birth rate in the world.
Izanagi finally escaped from his terrifying sister/wife (seriously could this story be more chauvinistic?) and stopped at a river to purify himself (dirty, dirty women!).
When he washed his left eye, the Goddess of the sun, Amaterasu, was brought to life. When he washed his right eye, Touki, the God of night was born. And then when he washed his nose, Suzano-o, the God of the sea, came to be.
Now that no nasty women were involved in the process, things went pretty smoothly from there - apart from the Caen-and-Abel -like slaughters, the raping, the pillaging, the lust and battles for power, the divine jealousies and intricate revenges: All the usual biblical stuff, right? Fun for all the family.
And then the rest of the book was basically a lineage of who begat whom up until the present day emperors. Let me tell you, they were working from a pretty small gene pool - it seemed an awful lot of them were brother and sister. I’d better not say much more - you could get in real trouble over here for speaking ill of the Imperial family.
One final note, which really gave me a chuckle, was some of the names of the progeny. You can forget your Abrahams and your Ezekials. Why not try on a
Masu-Katsu-a-Katsu-Kachi-Haya-ni-Ame-no-Oshi-Ho-Mimi-no-Mikato (24 syllables)
for size! But please, just call him Joe.