Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/204

 very high in the administrative organisation. From this office the priests of the two religions received equal recognition, and the same official title (kyōdō-shoku). Thenceforth the Government's purpose of identifying the interests of Church and State gradually ceased to have practical force, until (in 1884) the ranks and titles of the priests were abolished; the various sects were declared perfectly free to choose their own superintendents and manage their own affairs, and in the administrative organisation there remained only an insignificant Bureau of Shrines and Temples (Shaji-kyoku) to deal with questions from which the secular authority could not prudently dissociate itself. The last tie that bound the Church to the State was severed by the promulgation of the Constitution in 1889, the twenty-seventh article of which declares that, "within limits not prejudicial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, Japanese subjects shall enjoy freedom of religious belief."

Shintō, however, remains the unique creed of the Imperial House. Appended to the Constitution by which freedom of conscience was unequivocally granted to the people, were three documents, — a preamble, an Imperial oath in the Sanctuary of the Palace, and an Imperial speech, — every one of which contained words that left no doubt of the sovereign's rigid adherence to the