Japan has many small shrines located at street corners, near farms and fields, and in the mountains. This paper discusses how small shrines in Tokyo brought about changes in the early “Meiji period (1868-1912)” that drastically reformed the Shinto shrine system from the urban history perspective. An inspection of the actual situation of these shrines, especially “unranked shrines” is possible by analyzing the administrative documents of Tokyo Prefecture during this period.

 Firstly, there is a clarification of several legal characteristics of “unranked shrines” in the early Meiji period. Shrines, which were called “unranked shrines, ” were not shrine ranked in the modern shrine ranking system but were officially recognized by the government as Shinto shrines. “Unranked shrine” was the customary shrine ranking in order to distinguish these official shrines from unofficial ones. There were some differences between ranked and unranked shrines regarding money and administration.

 Chapter 3 reveals the situation relating to the administration of unranked shrines in Tokyo by interpreting historical documents sent by Shinto priests to the Tokyo Prefectural Government. All unranked shrines were assigned to ranked shines and a Shinto priest of the ranked shrine perform administrative and ritual duties of unranked shrines. Many unranked shrines hired shrine keepers to carry out daily work to avoid the difficulty of administration. Unranked shrines needed to bear the expense for hiring shrine keepers, holding festivals, and repairing the shrine temple.

 The first half of chapter 4 see the restoration of the process of officially regulating unranked shrines in Tokyo. Unranked shrines were regulated in stages as the ranked shrines were graded on a massive scale (four times in Tokyo). There seems to be no regularity regarding the number of unranked shrines assigned to each ranked shrine. It could be inferred that this was not decided by the shrine’s ranking or its number of Shinto priests, especially since some shrines that were graded higher ranks were not assigned any unranked shrines.

 The latter half of chapter 4 defines the relation between the administrative system of unranked shrines and the Ujiko system through analyzing the logic of the formation of the administrative relationships between ranked and unranked shrines by relating them to Ujiko-iki areas. The administrative relationships between ranked and unranked shrines did not vary in stages like the associations of shrines organized according to the shrine ranking system. Furthermore, promotion and demotion of unranked shrines were managed in each Ujiko-iki area. This shows that the administrative relationships between ranked and unranked shrines were formed based on each Ujiko-iki area. The government attempted to unify the administration of all shrines based on the Ujiko system. Believers of unranked shrines were also the Ujiko of the ranked shrines that the shrine was assigned to.

 Therefore, in Tokyo during the Meiji period, the administration of “unranked shrines” was constructed based on the dual logic of the modern Ujiko system and the actual belief of unranked shrines.

 This paper discusses the logic that leads small shrines, which were enshrined in the cities through premodern times, to continue to exist or be abolished in the early Meiji period in which the system of the Shinto shrines was reformed drastically from the perspective of urban history. The actual situation of shrine disposal in Tokyo is inspected diachronically and comprehensively by analyzing the administrative documents of Tokyo Prefecture during this time.

 Firstly, the legal characteristics of ordinance No. 37 of the Ministry of Religion in 1876 are clarified by referring to previous studies. This ordinance has been investigated in relation to the shrine merger at the end of the Meiji period as the law that was the basis for shrine disposal. Takishima (2000) revealed that a few shrines were newly registered as unranked shrines in Jinja Meisai-cho—an official register of the government in Tokyo—after this ordinance; most of the shrines were merged with other shrines or were relocated to the precinct of other shrines. The actual situation was that many shrines were already registered as unranked shrines until the ordinance was elected.

 In Chapter 3, the process of shrine disposal in Tokyo during the early Meiji period is discussed by interpreting historical administrative documents and referring to several systems concerned with shrine disposal. A total of 105 shrines (45 shrines in the urban area) were disposed of in Tokyo Prefecture from 1873 to 1888. Some of the shrines disposed were ranked as shrines, but most were unranked. These shrines or small shrines by the streets and in private estates were not registered in Jjinja Meisai-cho after 1873, during which time there was wholesale grading of the shrine-ranking system in Tokyo Prefecture.

 In Chapter 4, the maintenance and survival of Shinto shrines in the early Meiji period are considered by analyzing the person concerned, the manners and factors of individual cases, and disclosure of the logics and the facts of shrine disposal in Tokyo. The first half of this chapter discloses that shrine disposal in Tokyo was executed in three ways: merge the deity with other shrines, relocate the temple to other places, and change the registration from official to private. The union of shrines by merging the deity or moving the temple into other shrine precincts as subordinate shrines was frequently chosen as a passive method for economic reasons. However, this method was not necessarily equivalent to the physical elimination of shrines, which was recommended by the administration.

 In the last half of Chapter 4, it was found that shrine disposal in Tokyo in the early Meiji period had four causes: serious damage to the temple, absence of permanence, loss of the precinct, and improvement of the conditions; by analyzing actual situations, the combination of these multiple reasons led to the disposal of many shrines. Many shrines that were disposed of had serious damage from fires and typhoons, and the loss of the precincts provided the momentum. Fundamentally, Ujiko and believers assessed the permanence of the shrine temple and precinct and selected the method of disposal that was required in special cases of disposal by the administration.

香椎宮は724年に創建し、仲哀天皇・神功皇后の神霊を祀る歴史ある神社であり、出雲大社を除いて日本国内に16ある勅祭社のひとつである。境内・境内外には多くの摂社と末社を抱え、重要文化財を含む多くの観光資財を有している。しかし、高い