Per the Nihon Shoki, when the legendary Empress Jingū embarked on her conquest of the Korean Peninsula, she entrusted the Sumitomo sanjin to protect her passage across the ocean.

En route back to Japan, she had a message from the gods that their oracle was to be found in Nagato Province, where a shrine should be built.

The shrine first appears in the historical record in an entry dated 859 in the Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku.

From the Kamakura period, it received donations from successive shogun, including Minamoto no Yoritomo.

[3] The shrine is located a twenty-minute walk from Shin-Shimonoseki Station on the Sanyo Shinkansen.