Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 2002 29/3-4 The Form ation of Sect Shinto

This essay analyzes the formation of sect Shinto in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is pointed out that the Shinto sects that constituted sect Shinto were constructed on the basis of preexisting infrastructures, which had developed in response to the profound social changes accompa nying the modernization process of the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods. Sect Shinto took shape in a crossfire between the impact of modernization from below, and the vicissitudes of Meiji religious policy from above. The essay further proposes to distinguish between two types of Shinto religious move ments: Shinto sects, characterized by a typical “dish-stmcture， ” and Shinto-derived New Religions, displaying a “tree-structure. ’ ’ Of these two types, groups of the first type were shaped more directly by Meiji religious policy than the latter, wnich first arose as “founded religions ” and adapted to Meiji policy onty Later, in the course of their institutionalization