The Meiji-era shinbutsu bunri orders struck at the very heart of Ryōbu Shintō, because that tradition was built precisely on the intimate intertwining of kami and buddhas. Legal edicts mandated a strict separation of Shintō and Buddhism, forcing temple–shrine complexes that had long embodied this syncretism to divide into either purely Shintō or purely Buddhist institutions. Buddhist priests who had administered shrines were removed, and shrine priests were installed to oversee what was now defined as a distinct, non-Buddhist sphere of worship. In this way, the hybrid institutional forms and hereditary roles that had sustained Ryōbu Shintō for centuries were systematically dismantled.

Doctrinally, the blow was just as severe. The honji suijaku framework, in which kami were understood as manifestations or “traces” of buddhas and bodhisattvas, was officially repudiated. Texts, liturgies, and teachings that explicitly articulated the equivalence of kami and buddhas—such as the identification of certain kami with Dainichi Nyorai—were suppressed or reinterpreted. Syncretic rituals that blended Buddhist and Shintō elements were prohibited, and new Shintō scholarship emphasized an ostensibly “pure,” ancient kami worship, free from the Shingon-based interpretive lenses that had shaped Ryōbu Shintō thought.

The physical landscape of worship also changed dramatically under these policies. Buddhist halls, pagodas, and statues within shrine precincts were demolished, relocated, or reassigned, and Buddhist imagery was removed from shrines while Shintō elements were purged from temples. Syncretic artwork, ritual implements, and sacred spaces that had expressed the unity of kami and buddhas were destroyed or stripped of their mixed character. As a result, sacred mountains, pilgrimage routes, and famous shrine-temple complexes lost the dual religious identity that had once been taken for granted.

Yet even as the formal structures of Ryōbu Shintō were dismantled, its spirit did not vanish entirely. Elements of its worldview—such as the intuitive sense that certain kami and buddhas correspond to one another, or the habit of sharing festivals and ritual forms across the two traditions—continued to persist quietly in local practice. These survivals no longer bore the explicit name or institutional framework of Ryōbu Shintō, but they testify to how deeply the syncretic imagination had sunk into the religious life of communities. The shinbutsu bunri orders thus did not merely redraw administrative boundaries; they attempted to redefine the religious cosmos itself, even as traces of the older, more fluid vision continued to flicker beneath the surface.