Shinbutsu Bunri - Consequences of The Separation Policy

Consequences of The Separation Policy

The campaign ultimately failed to destroy Buddhism's influence on the Japanese, who still needed funerals, graves and ancestral rites, all services traditionally provided by Buddhism. The state's first attempt to influence religious life therefore resulted in failure. In 1873 the government admitted that the effort to elevate Shinto above Buddhism had failed.　

The Meiji government's policies however caused the diffusion of the idea that Shinto was the true religion of the Japanese, finally revealed after remaining for a long time hidden behind Buddhism. In recent years, however, many historians have come to believe that the syncretism of kami and buddhas was just as authentically Japanese.

The Japanese government was also successful in creating the impression that Shinto and Buddhism in Japan are completely independent religions. Most Japanese today are unaware that some of their customary religious practices cannot be understood outside the context of the syncretism of kami and Buddhas. In discussing some Japanese Buddhist temples dedicated to the cult of kami Inari, Shinto scholar Karen Smyers comments:

Recent scholarship has shown the term to be highly problematic – its current content is largely a political construction of the Meiji period. The surprise of many of my informants regarding the existence of Buddhist Inari temples shows the success of the government's attempt to create separate conceptual categories regarding sites and certain identities, although practice remains multiple and nonexclusive.

In any case, in less than two decades Buddhism had not only had recovered, but had modernized itself, becoming once more a significant force. This led to the coexistence of Shinto and Buddhism as we see it today.