<P> In the 18th century, various Japanese scholars, in particular Motoori Norinaga (本 居 宣長, 1730--1801), tried to tear apart the "real" Shinto from various foreign influences . The attempt was largely unsuccessful, since as early as the Nihon Shoki parts of the mythology were explicitly borrowed from Taoism doctrines . For example, the co-creator deities Izanami and Izanagi are explicitly compared to yin and yang . However, the attempt did set the stage for the arrival of state Shinto, following the Meiji Restoration (c. 1868), when Shinto and Buddhism were separated (shinbutsu bunri). </P> <P> Fridell argues that scholars call the period 1868--1945 the "State Shinto period" because, "during these decades, Shinto elements came under a great deal of overt state influence and control as the Japanese government systematically utilized shrine worship as a major force for mobilizing imperial loyalties on behalf of modern nation - building ." However, the government had already been treating shrines as an extension of government before Meiji; see for example the Tenpō Reforms . Moreover, according to the scholar Jason Ānanda Josephson, It is inaccurate to describe shrines as constituting a "state religion" or a "theocracy" during this period since they had neither organization, nor doctrine, and were uninterested in conversion . </P> <P> The Meiji Restoration reasserted the importance of the emperor and the ancient chronicles to establish the Empire of Japan, and in 1868 the government attempted to recreate the ancient imperial Shinto by separating shrines from the temples that housed them . During this period, numerous scholars of kokugaku believed that this national Shinto could be the unifying agent of the country around the Emperor while the process of modernization was undertaken with all possible speed . The psychological shock of the Western "Black Ships" and the subsequent collapse of the shogunate convinced many that the nation needed to unify in order to resist being colonized by outside forces . </P> <P> In 1871, a Ministry of Rites (jingi - kan) was formed and Shinto shrines were divided into twelve levels with the Ise Shrine (dedicated to Amaterasu, and thus symbolic of the legitimacy of the Imperial family) at the peak and small sanctuaries of humble towns at the base . The following year, the ministry was replaced with a new Ministry of Religion, charged with leading instruction in "shushin" (moral courses). Priests were officially nominated and organized by the state, and they instructed the youth in a form of Shinto theology based on the official dogma of the divinity of Japan's national origins and its Emperor . However, this propaganda did not take, and the unpopular Ministry of Rites was dissolved in the mid-1870s . </P>

Shinto became the main religion in japan during the ____ period