Sect Shinto refers to the organised, founder-led movements that were recognised as a distinct category of Shinto in modern Japan, a set of religious bodies, each with its own founder, teachings, and congregation, grouped apart from the shrine tradition. These sects, formed largely in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, include mountain-worship groups, faith-healing and revivalist movements, and confessional communities, and unlike the shrine tradition they are defined by their founders and doctrines and by voluntary membership rather than by attachment to a local shrine.
Thirteen groups were officially recognised as Kyoha Shinto ("Sect Shinto") sects under Meiji-era administrative classification, among them Kurozumikyo, founded by Kurozumi Munetada after a revelatory experience in 1814; Tenrikyo, founded by Nakayama Miki following revelations beginning in 1838; and Konkokyo, founded by Kawate Bunjiro after his own revelations from 1859. Each developed its own scripture, headquarters, and ordained ministry organised around the founder's teaching rather than around a particular shrine or locality, and several, Tenrikyo especially, grew into substantial international religious movements with millions of adherents, complicating any simple description of them as merely a Shinto subcategory.