Roughly 80,000 shrines operate in Japan, most affiliated to the Association of Shinto Shrines, the private body formed in 1946 to replace state administration. It sets standards for priests and ritual, though individual shrines are largely self-governing and some large ones, including Yasukuni, stand outside it.
Counting believers does not work here. Surveys asking Japanese people whether they hold a religion typically get low figures, while surveys asking whether they visited a shrine at new year get high ones, and both are honest answers to different questions. Something like two thirds of the population makes the new year shrine visit, hatsumode. Newborns are presented at a shrine, children are taken at the ages marked by the shichi-go-san rite, many weddings use Shinto form, and construction sites are commonly purified before building starts. The same households will use Buddhist rites for funerals and memorial days without any sense of contradiction.
Institutionally the tradition faces the same demographic problem as rural Japan generally. Depopulation has left many shrines without a resident priest, with one priest serving a dozen or more, and without the local subscriptions that maintained buildings. Large urban and pilgrimage shrines, Ise and Meiji Jingu among them, are by contrast very well attended.
Politically, the Association has an affiliated lobby that campaigns for constitutional revision, official recognition of shrine rites and patriotic education. Its influence is a matter of active argument in Japan, with critics tracing continuity from prewar state doctrine and defenders describing ordinary civic advocacy. It is worth separating that argument from the shrines themselves: the great majority of shrine activity is local, seasonal and unconcerned with national politics.