page_title: Jingū-ji
section_title: Shinbutsu bunri
hierarchical_section_title: Jingū-ji / History / Shinbutsu bunri
caption_attribution_description: The Yakushidō (薬師堂) at Tsurugaoka Hachimangū in Kamakura during the Meiji Era. The finial had been removed.
context_page_description: Until the Meiji period, the jingū-ji were places of worship composed of a Buddhist temple and a Shintō shrine, both dedicated to a local kami. These complexes were born when a temple was erected next to a shrine to help its kami with its karmic problems. At the time, kami were thought to be also subjected to karma, and therefore in need of a salvation only Buddhism could provide. Having first appeared during the Nara period, jingū-ji remained common for over a millennium until, with few exceptions, they were destroyed in compliance with the Kami and Buddhas Separation Act of 1868. Seiganto-ji is a Tendai temple part of the Kumano Sanzan Shinto shrine complex, and as such can be considered one of the few shrine-temples still extant.
context_section_description: In 1868, the government ordered the complete separation of Buddhism and Shinto. The measure had several goals, the main one being the weakening of Buddhism, which had collaborated with the Tokugawa shogunate. Although the government's Kami and Buddhas Separation Act didn't explicitly order the closing of temples, the destruction of Buddhist property and the defrocking of Buddhist priests and nuns, it was often interpreted as implying it. As a consequence, the  haibutsu kishaku (literally, 'Away with Buddha, destroy Shakyamuni') movement, born spontaneously as a reaction against Buddhism's collaboration with the Tokugawa shōguns, soon spread to the entire country with enormous consequences. An estimated 30,000 Buddhist structures were demolished between 1868 and 1874. A substantial part of the population that had felt financially exploited by the danka system (檀家制度, danka seido) participated in the movement.
  The shinbutsu bunri policy was also the direct cause of serious damage to important cultural properties. Because mixing the two religions was now forbidden, both shrines and temples of shrine-temple complexes had to give away the parts of their properties which were now illegal, thus damaging the integrity of their cultural heritage and decreasing their own historical and economic value. Shasō were forced to become laymen. 
  For example, the shrine today called Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū in Kamakura was until 1868 a jingu-ji called Tsurugaoka Hachimangū-ji. It was forced to demolish its entire Buddhist shichidō garan and sell it as wood. Its giant Niō, the two wooden wardens usually found at the sides of a temple's entrance, being objects of Buddhist worship and therefore illegal where they were, were sold to Jufuku-ji, where they still are.
caption: A Buddhist pagoda (a Yakushi-dō (薬師堂) at Tsurugaoka Hachimangū-ji in Kamakura before the shinbutsu bunri
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