Shinbutsu Bunri: The Meiji Separation of Kami and Buddhas

Shinbutsu bunri, "the separation of kami and buddhas", is the name for the series of orders issued by Japan's new Meiji government from 1868 to divide Shinto shrines from Buddhist temples after more than a thousand years of combination. Intended to purify the worship of the kami as the basis of a restored imperial state, the policy unleashed a wave of destruction known as haibutsu kishaku, "abolish the Buddha, destroy Śākyamuni", and permanently redrew the map of Japanese religion.

What Was Shinbutsu Bunri?§

For most of Japanese history kami and buddhas were worshipped together. Buddhist temples stood within shrine precincts, monks performed rites before the kami, and the theory of honji suijaku identified each kami as a local "trace" of a buddha or bodhisattva. This long fusion is described in Shinto and Buddhism: Shinbutsu Shūgō. Many shrines were in practice Buddhist institutions: their chief officials (bettō) were monks, their kami bore Buddhist titles such as gongen ("provisional manifestation") or daibosatsu ("great bodhisattva"), and their sanctuaries housed Buddhist statues.

The leaders of the Meiji Restoration of 1868 sought to legitimise the new government by "restoring" the ancient unity of rites and rule (saisei itchi) under the emperor, the descendant of the sun goddess. In their view the worship of the kami had to be cleansed of foreign accretions. Shinbutsu bunri was the policy designed to do this; it was not formally an order to destroy Buddhism, but in many places it was understood that way.

Roots of the Separation: Confucian Critics and National Learning§

Hostility to Buddhism had grown during the Edo period (1603–1868). Under the Tokugawa system every household was registered with a Buddhist temple, which certified that its members were not Christians; this gave temples a secure income and made them, in the eyes of critics, wealthy and lax. Confucian scholars attacked Buddhism as otherworldly, parasitic and foreign. In the 1660s the lords of Okayama and Mito, both influenced by Confucianism, closed hundreds of temples in their domains and promoted shrines without Buddhist elements, and in the 1840s Tokugawa Nariaki of Mito confiscated temple bells to cast cannon.

The school of National Learning (kokugaku) supplied a religious rationale. Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) urged a return to the ancient Japanese spirit revealed in the Kojiki, freed from "Chinese mind". His self-proclaimed successor Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843) went further, writing polemics that ridiculed Buddhism and developing a Shinto theology of the afterlife and of the kami as creators. Hirata's followers, numerous among village leaders, shrine priests and samurai of the late Edo period, were prominent in the early Meiji religious bureaucracy.

The Edicts of 1868 and the Restoration of the Jingikan§

In the third month of 1868, within weeks of the new government's establishment, a proclamation announced the restoration of the ancient Department of Divinities (Jingikan), which would oversee all shrines. A few days later, monks serving at shrines were ordered to return to lay life, and on the twenty-eighth day of the month the Council of State issued the core order: shrines were to stop using Buddhist terms such as gongen and Gozu Tennō as names for their kami, Buddhist images were no longer to serve as the sacred bodies of kami, and Buddhist objects such as statues, bells and ritual implements were to be removed from shrines.

Further orders followed. Hachiman, long called "Great Bodhisattva", was to be addressed as a kami; Buddhist funerals for shrine priests were replaced with Shinto ones; and in 1871 the government confiscated most temple and shrine lands. In 1872 it abolished the mountain religion of Shugendō, which was inseparably Buddhist and kami-centred, ordering its practitioners to affiliate with Tendai or Shingon Buddhism or become laymen. In the same year Buddhist monks were permitted to marry and eat meat, a measure that treated them as ordinary subjects rather than a separate estate.

Haibutsu Kishaku: The Destruction of Buddhist Images and Temples§

The orders did not instruct anyone to destroy temples, but they triggered violence. In the fourth month of 1868 a group led by Juge Shigekuni, a priest of the Hie Shrine at the foot of Mount Hiei, forced their way into the shrine's sanctuaries, which had long been controlled by the Tendai monastery of Enryakuji, and burned or threw out Buddhist statues, sutras and implements. The government responded with a notice cautioning against disorder, but similar acts took place across the country.

The scale varied enormously by region. Where domain authorities were influenced by Hirata's school or saw an opportunity to seize temple wealth, the campaign became systematic. In Satsuma (Kagoshima) every one of its more than a thousand temples was abolished and their monks returned to lay life, and Buddhism there had to be rebuilt almost from nothing. Toyama ordered each Buddhist sect to consolidate into a single temple; Matsumoto, the Oki islands, Sado and Tosa saw mass closures. In the Ise area, temples near the Grand Shrines were cleared away. Statues were burned, beheaded or sold; bronze bells and images were melted for metal.

In Nara, the monks of the great Kōfukuji, which had long controlled the neighbouring Kasuga Shrine, became Shinto priests of Kasuga, and the temple was left nearly deserted; according to a well-known story, its five-storeyed pagoda was nearly sold for scrap. At Kamakura's Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, the pagoda and Buddhist halls were demolished. The historian Allan Grapard, studying the mountain shrine-temple of Tōnomine, called the episode "Japan's ignored cultural revolution".

Renamed Gods: Gongen, Gozu Tennō and Konpira§

Separation required decisions about who the kami actually were. Where a shrine's deity had been known by a Buddhist name, priests and officials identified it with a kami from the classical myths. The Gion shrine in Kyoto, home of the plague deity Gozu Tennō, became the Yasaka Shrine, its deity now identified as Susanoo. The Kumano Gongen were reinterpreted as kami of the Kojiki, and at Nachi the Buddhist temple Seigantoji survived only as a separate institution beside the shrine, as described in Kumano Sanzan and the Kumano Kodō.

One well-studied case is Konpira on Shikoku, a popular pilgrimage centre whose deity, Konpira Daigongen, derived from the Indian river deity Kumbhīra, a guardian of the Buddha's teaching. In 1868 the Buddhist temple that ran the site was converted into the shrine Kotohira-gū, its deity identified with the kami Ōmononushi, its monks turned into priests, and its Buddhist images removed. Sarah Thal's study shows how local actors negotiated these changes to preserve the pilgrimage and its income.

Buddhist Responses and the End of the Campaign§

Buddhists did not remain passive. Monks and laity petitioned, protested and in some places rioted, especially in areas where the True Pure Land school (Jōdo Shinshū) was strong, such as Echizen and Mikawa. Reformist clerics argued that Buddhism could serve the modern nation. The government's attempt to unite Shinto and Buddhist preachers in a national teaching campaign through the Great Teaching Institute (Daikyōin), founded in 1872, collapsed after the Jōdo Shinshū cleric Shimaji Mokurai, who had observed religious policy in Europe, criticised it as a violation of religious freedom. The Institute was dissolved in 1875.

From the mid-1870s the government moved towards a different settlement. Shrines were defined as non-religious sites of state ritual, while Buddhism and Christianity were classed as "religions" enjoying conditional freedom, guaranteed in Article 28 of the Constitution of 1889. The historian James Ketelaar has shown how Buddhist leaders, having been cast as heretics and enemies of the nation, reinvented their tradition as a patriotic and modern "Japanese Buddhism". This new classification of religion is examined in Jason Josephson's work on the invention of the category in Japan.

Legacy: Lost Treasures and a New Map of Japanese Religion§

The material losses were immense, though impossible to quantify precisely. Countless statues, paintings and texts were destroyed, and many found their way to dealers and collectors, including Western museums. Concern for the heritage grew in the 1880s, when officials and scholars, among them Okakura Kakuzō and the American Ernest Fenollosa, surveyed temple treasures, and in 1897 the Ancient Shrines and Temples Preservation Law gave the first legal protection to religious buildings and art.

The deeper legacy was conceptual. The idea that Shinto and Buddhism are two distinct religions, now taken for granted, is in large part a product of the separation. Yet combination never disappeared. Japanese families still visit shrines for births and New Year and turn to Buddhist temples for funerals, many temples keep protective kami, and since the late twentieth century some shrines and temples have revived joint rites, a story continued in What Is Shinto?.

Frequently asked questions§

What was shinbutsu bunri?§

Shinbutsu bunri was the Meiji government's policy, beginning in 1868, of separating Shinto shrines and kami from Buddhist temples, clergy and images. It ended the long combination of the two traditions and aimed to create a purified Shinto supporting imperial rule.

What does haibutsu kishaku mean?§

Haibutsu kishaku means "abolish the Buddha, destroy Śākyamuni". It refers to the movement of violence against Buddhist temples, images and clergy that followed the separation orders in the late 1860s and early 1870s, especially in domains such as Satsuma.

Did the Meiji government ban Buddhism?§

No. The government never outlawed Buddhism, and it restrained the violence after the first years. But it removed Buddhism from shrines, confiscated temple lands, abolished Shugendō and ended Buddhism's role in state ritual, while some local authorities closed temples on a large scale.

Sources and further reading§

• Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution — James Edward Ketelaar, 1990
• Rearranging the Landscape of the Gods: The Politics of a Pilgrimage Site in Japan, 1573–1912 — Sarah Thal, 2005
• The Invention of Religion in Japan — Jason Ānanda Josephson, 2012
• Shinto and the State, 1868–1988 — Helen Hardacre, 1989
• Buddhas and Kami in Japan: Honji Suijaku as a Combinatory Paradigm — Mark Teeuwen and Fabio Rambelli (eds.), 2003
• A New History of Shinto — John Breen and Mark Teeuwen, 2010
• Shinto: A History — Helen Hardacre, 2017