Haibutsu kishaku

[1] More narrowly, it also indicates a particular historic movement and specific historic events based on that ideology which, during the Meiji Restoration, produced the destruction of Buddhist temples, images and texts, and the forced return to secular life of Buddhist monks.

Another example is the policies of temple closure and monk defrocking of the Okayama, Aizu, and Mito Domains, also adopted for political and economic, rather than religious, reasons during the early modern period.

[1] The Meiji period form of haibutsu kishaku, based on kokugaku and Shinto-centrism, was instead dictated by a desire to distinguish between foreign Buddhism and a purely Japanese Shinto.

Although the shogunate's official philosophy was lay Neo-Confucianism,[6] Buddhism had become an integral part of the state as a consequence of the Tokugawa's anti-Christian policy.

[8] Under the danka system families had by law several obligations towards Buddhist institutions, among them monetary donations to their affiliated temple.

[9] It is difficult to estimate how many temples were closed during the turmoil, because it seems likely that many disappeared simply because Buddhist authorities, taking advantage of the fall of the Tokugawa, were trying to streamline the system and eliminate redundancies.