本居宣長
Still according to this view, Shinto's rise as an autonomous religion was gradual and started to become evident with the emergence of Yoshida Kanetomo's Yoshida Shintō. The term Shinto started to be used with today's meaning of "kami" worship only later during the Edo period. During the same era, Kokugaku theorists like Motoori Norinaga tried to separate it intellectually from Buddhism, preparing the ground for the final schism of the Meiji Restoration.