Hinukan, the Hearth Fire Deity

Hinukan, 'the deity of fire', is the hearth deity of household religion throughout Okinawa and the Amami islands. Originally the cooking hearth itself was the object of worship; the deity later came to be embodied in three hearthstones (umichimun) and, in modern kitchens, in a small ceramic censer whose ash is held to house the god. The hearth deity is generally regarded as female — though household traditions also speak of a divine couple or of three sibling deities — and is tended exclusively by the senior woman of the household, who makes offerings on the first and fifteenth of each lunar month; the cult passes from woman to woman within the house. Hinukan is the household's intermediary with the higher gods: prayers are announced first at the hearth, and at the close of the lunar year the deity ascends to heaven to report on the family, returning at the new year, a rite in which scholars see the influence of the Chinese stove god. Many Okinawans hold that a dwelling can stand without an ancestral altar but not without its hearth deity.

Domains

• hearth fire
• household protection
• prayer mediation

Powers

• to carry the household's prayers and reports to the gods of heaven
• to guard the family hearth and the wellbeing of the household

Sources

• William P. Lebra, Okinawan Religion: Belief, Ritual, and Social Structure (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1966)
• Susan Sered, Women of the Sacred Groves: Divine Priestesses of Okinawa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
• Okinawa daihyakka jiten [沖縄大百科事典, Okinawa Encyclopedia] (Naha: Okinawa Times, 1983), s.v. 'ヒヌカン'