The shrine's principal deity is Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, a historical figure who is reputed to have passed through the Akashi area during his life, and who was deified in the centuries following his death, as a god of literature, scholarship, fire safety, and childbirth.

The shrine's principal deity is Kakinomoto no Hitomaro,[1] a god of waka poetry[1] and, by extension, scholarship and literature,[1] but also, by way of a pair of puns on his name, fire safety (火止まる hi-tomaru = "fire stop")[1] and childbirth (人生る hito-umaru = "person is born")[1] According to tradition, Hitomaro passed through the Akashi area multiple times while travelling between his home in Yamato Province and his assigned district in Iwami Province,[1] and a poem he wrote on Akashi Strait survives.

[1] The history of the shrine is said to begin in 887 (Ninna 3),[1] when Kakushō (覚証), a Buddhist monk of the temple Gesshō-ji,[1] speculated that Hitomaro's spirit had come to rest in Akashi[1] and constructed a small shrine at the back of his temple.

[1] Both the temple and the shrine were moved to their current location to accommodate the construction of Akashi Castle.

[1] In the shrine grounds is a monument constructed on the order of Matsudaira Nobuyuki [ja],[1] inscribed with a 1,712-character biography of Hitomaro.