Abstract
The movement to "separate buddhas and kami" (shinbutsu bunri), which is the counter side to the "amalgamation of buddhas and kami" (shinbutsu shugo), is a reflection of the whole of Japanese history and the construction of a State with centralized power from the early modern to the modern era in Japan. The Meiji Restoration and its surrounding ethos, which provided the basis for the persecution and transformation of Buddhism, led to a transformation in the structure of power and the systemization of various fields of knowledge. The way of thinking of the economic systems, the development of National Learning, and the compilation of a history of a single country, came together to form the ideal of the Meiji state, which attempted to "demythologize" Buddhism while at the same time bringing to completion a new mythology created by the government. When we gaze at the future while analyzing this structure as a whole, it becomes necessary to construct a new Buddhist Studies with a hermeneutics that is based on the world of daily life.
