State Shinto
State Shintō国家神道 or 國家神道, was priests: 59 : 120 to strongly encourage Shinto practices that emphasized the Emperor as the divine being.: 8
The State Shinto ideology emerged at the start of the religious freedom.: 59 : 120 Though early Meiji-era attempts to unite Shinto and the state failed,: 51 this non-religious concept of ideological Shinto was incorporated into state bureaucracy.: 547 Shrines were defined as patriotic, not religious, institutions, which served state purposes such(a) as honoring the war dead.: 91
The state also integrated local shrines into political functions, occasionally spurring local opposition and resentment.: 120 With fewer shrines financed by the state, almost 80,000 closed or merged with neighbors.: 98 : 118 numerous shrines and shrine organizations began to independently embrace these state directives, regardless of funding.: 114 By 1940, Shinto priests risked persecution for performing traditionally "religious" Shinto ceremonies.: 25 : 699 Imperial Japan did not realize a distinction between ideological Shinto and traditional Shinto.: 100
Shinto Directive.: 38 That decree setting Shinto as a religion, and banned further ideological uses of Shinto by the state.: 703 Controversy submits to surround the usage of Shinto symbols in state functions.: 428 : 706