Fii Nu Kan, Househould Deity of Ryukyuan Religion

Typical of stoves in Okinawan traditional home with offering for household deity. Source: mugisha.net. 

In the Ryukyuan indigenous religion, women are appointed as religious leaders who carry out various rituals for the community. Daily rituals at home are performed in the kitchen fireplace where prayers for ancestors are performed by the oldest woman in the house. Monthly ceremonies for ancestors and agricultural ceremonies are mostly performed by her sister. The first god who received the offerings is the kitchen god (fii nu kan 火の神 / ヒヌカン).

The role as ceremony leader is carried out until she dies and is then carried on by his daughter-in-law or the eldest woman in the house. The kitchen god is the most important household god whose job is to protect its inhabitants. This kitchen god must be reported about things that happen in the house such as births, marriages, moving, and deaths. The kitchen god is even still revered in modern homes on a shelf on the north wall of the kitchen in the form of a censer, a small vase with a branch of susuki, an offering bowl filled with salt, rice and sake.

The gods can also be symbolized by three conical stones from the shore. On Izena Island, these stones will be replaced with new ones when the head of the household dies. Meanwhile, in another area, an earthen kitchen fireplace was demolished and rebuilt after the death of the eldest female in the house.

References: 

1. Holy Women in the Twentieth Century on JSTOR (Onarigami: Holy Women in the Twentieth Century, Monika Wacker. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3/4, Feminism and Religion in Contemporary Japan (Fall, 2003), pp. 339-359. Nanzan University.

2.  https://www.mugisha.net/reading/pray_2.php  ヒヌカン信仰の始まり