The essay analyzes the formation of sect Shinto in the second half of the 19th century. It is pointed out that the Shinto sects that constituted sect Shinto were constructed on the basis of preexisting infrastructures, which had developed in response to the profound social changes accompanying the modernization process of the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods. Sect Shinto took shape in a crossfire between the impact of modernization from below，and the vicissitudes of Meiji religious policy from above.
The essay further proposes to distinguish between two types of Shinto religious movements：Shinto sects, characterized by a typical "dish-structure," and Shintoderived New Religions, displaying a "tree-structure." Of these two types, groups of the first type were shaped more directly by Meiji religious policy than the latter，which first arose as "founded religions" and adapted to Meiji policy only later，in the course of their institutionalization.
