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.