The ichinomiya of Izumo Province

What the Japanese sources say

Izumo Taisha (出雲大社) and Kumano Taisha (熊野大社) are both treated as the ichinomiya, but it is Kumano Taisha that calls itself one. Its name is written out as “Izumo no Kuni Ichinomiya Kumano Taisha”, and the Shimane Prefecture Shrine Agency also records that it appears as Kumano Taisha in the Izumo no Kuni Fudoki (出雲國風土記, 733) and as Kumano ni Imasu Jinja in the Engishiki Jinmyōchō (延喜式神名帳, 927, the register of official shrines in the Engishiki law code), and that it is a “great shrine of the land of Izumo” alongside Kizuki Taisha (Izumo Taisha).

Neither Izumo Taisha’s own website nor the Shimane Prefecture Shrine Agency’s page for Izumo Taisha uses the word ichinomiya.

What shows the relationship between the two shrines is a rite that still continues. When the head priest of Izumo Taisha is succeeded by another, the fire is to be received from Kumano Taisha, and every year on 15 October the head priest of Izumo Taisha goes to Kumano Taisha to receive the fire-drilling mortar and fire-drilling pestle (the Kamedayū Shinji, 亀太夫神事).

— The old centre was Ou (意宇: Kumano Taisha, the provincial capital (kokufu) and the base of the Izumo kuni no miyatsuko, the province’s hereditary priestly governors), and the later centre was Kizuki (杵築: Izumo Taisha); that double structure can be read as carrying straight over into two ichinomiya standing side by side (this site’s reading). When, and in which document, the title moved has not been confirmed.

Written from Japanese sources, each quoted. The Japanese page has the same discussion with the original wording.