Ryōbu Shintō as a clearly defined, institutional tradition no longer stands in the form it once did. The systematic scholastic structures that flourished in earlier centuries were largely dismantled when state policy enforced a strict separation of kami and buddhas, and no major sect today openly presents itself as a direct, continuous “Ryōbu Shintō” school. What survives is better understood as a set of embedded currents rather than a distinct denomination. The old lineages did not so much vanish as become folded into other religious frameworks, especially within esoteric Buddhism and local shrine practice.

Shingon Buddhism remains the primary vessel through which Ryōbu Shintō’s legacy continues. Temples connected with Kōyasan and related Shingon lineages preserve doctrinal texts and ritual patterns that interpret the kami through the lens of esoteric Buddhist cosmology, even if these are now classified as Buddhist teachings on the gods rather than as a separate Shintō school. In some temple precincts, small shrines and the veneration of kami alongside buddhas still hint at the older syncretic vision. These practices are often quiet continuities rather than public declarations of a Ryōbu identity, yet they carry forward the same intuition of a shared sacred ground.

Certain regions and sacred sites also bear the imprint of this syncretism in their living religious culture. Former shrine–temple complexes, pilgrimage centers, and mountain sites may outwardly conform to the formal separation of traditions, while in practice maintaining a paired reverence for kami and buddhas. Pilgrims, clergy, and local communities sometimes relate to these beings as interwoven presences, drawing on patterns of worship that reach back to the Ryōbu period. In such places, the old equivalences—such as understanding particular kami as manifestations of buddhas or bodhisattvas—can still shape how the divine is approached, even if not named in doctrinal terms.

Beyond institutional and regional contexts, traces of Ryōbu Shintō persist in more diffuse ways. Some Shintō currents and lineages that historically grew out of Shingon-based interpretations of the kami retain conceptual and ritual echoes of the twofold mandala vision, though they have been absorbed into broader Shintō or Buddhist frameworks. Festivals, local rites, and folk practices in certain areas continue to blend Buddhist and Shintō elements in ways that reflect older syncretic assumptions. In this sense, Ryōbu Shintō survives less as a banner under which people gather and more as an undercurrent—textual, ritual, and experiential—within the wider tapestry of Japanese religious life.