State Shinto

Empire of Japan banknote with Yasukuni Shrine, now a private corporation due to the Shinto Directive.

State Shintō (国家神道, Kokka Shintō) is a

References

The following table shows the evolution of the Japanese government institutions related to shrines and religion from the Meiji Restoration to the present. From this table, it can be seen that shrines and religions were controlled by the same department from 1872 to 1900, but by separate departments before and after.

Government offices

After the surrender of Japan American Occupation authorities determined that Japan had constructed a "state religion". In December 1945, the elements of this State Shinto were announced and privatized. On 1 January 1946, Emperor Shōwa issued a statement, sometimes referred to as the Humanity Declaration, in which he quoted the Five Charter Oath of Emperor Meiji and announced that he was not an Akitsumikami and Japan was not built on myths. As a result of the privatization of shrines, Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a monument to war dead, has become a "religious corporation".

^[8] announced that visits to shrines had "only a purely civil value".Propaganda Fide declared that attendance at shrines was not a matter of religious faith but of respect for one's ancestors and the nation. In 1936, the Catholic Church's Home Ministry In a 1911 article, the head of the ^[7] gate was restricted to government-owned shrines.torii It seems clear that a number of rules were established to keep shrines separated from sectarian doctrines and religion in general. For example, preaching at shrines was forbidden, shrine officials were prohibited from conducting funerals, and the use of the ^[6]'s constitutional system "should be considered a secular system rather than a system of state religion."Empire of Japan Jolyon Baraka Thomas writes that the [5] When in the early

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