State Shinto and Postwar Religious Freedom

Japan's 1947 constitution, drafted under Allied occupation, separates religion from the state and disestablished Shinto after its use as State Shinto had bound emperor worship, nationalist ideology and shrine ritual together in the decades before 1945; the emperor's January 1946 declaration of humanity formally renounced the notion of divine imperial descent central to that ideology.

Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which enshrines Japan's war dead including convicted Class A war criminals from the Second World War, remains a recurring diplomatic flashpoint whenever sitting officials visit in an official capacity, since China and South Korea view such visits as endorsing wartime militarism. New religious movements proliferated in the postwar decades under the constitution's guarantee of religious freedom, most prominently Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhist movement historically linked to the Komeito political party, and less happily Aum Shinrikyo, whose 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway killed thirteen people and triggered a national reassessment of new religious movements. A 2022 assassination linked to grievances against the Unification Church prompted fresh government scrutiny of that movement's fundraising practices and its ties to Japanese politicians.