24 gave birth to the “abolish Buddhism and destroy Shākyamuni” movement, which focused on expelling the teachings of the Buddha from Japan. The Buddhists fought back, sparking a religious revolt. According to one scholar, the government’s policy toward the Buddhist community consisted of, “aggressive measures taken dur-ing the fifth and sixth years of the Meiji era (1872–1873) geared to-ward removing the glow of Buddhism’s authority in the eyes of the masses.” The Buddhist world’s influence on society was on a one-way path to decay. Against this background of historical change the Ministry of Reli-gious Education launched the movement for the “Propagation of the Great Teaching” (i.e. the establishment of Shinto) in order to tie the emperor to the people. In 1872 the Ministry of Religious Educa-tion appointed fourteen levels of instructors, with prefectural gover-nors at the top and masters of poetry at the bottom. Priests of Shinto shrines became the core of this system and Buddhist monks and priests throughout the country were reclassified as a kind of unpaid public servant. The preexisting organizational structure of shrines and temples all around the country was utilized to establish institutes of Great Teaching, Intermediate Teaching, and Elementary Teaching. Under this movement, the public were gathered at shrines and temples and told, “You must revere the Emperor and obey the will of the imperial court”—simply put, the people were taught to accept the emperor as sovereign ruler and to abide by the policies of the government. The institutes were not allowed to touch on any other topics, and in terms we might use today, they were merely agents of
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