Is this thing somehow tied up with the office of emperor in Japan? Japan doesn’t have the same kind of “separation of church and state” that we do.
State Shinto has been abolished, by Postwar Japanese government led by MacArthur.
Shinto (神道, shintō) is the native religion of Japan and was once its state religion. It involves the worship of kami (神, kami), spirits. Some kami are local and can be regarded as the spiritual being/spirit or genius of a particular place, but other ones represent major natural objects and processes: for example, Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, or Mount Fuji. Shinto is an animistic belief system. The word Shinto, from the original Chinese Shêntao (神道),[1] combines two kanji: "shin" (神, "shin") (loan words usually retain their Chinese pronunciation, hence shin not kami), meaning gods or spirits; and "tō" (道, "tō"), meaning a philosophical way or path (originally from the Chinese word dao). As such, Shinto is commonly translated as "The Way of the Gods". Some differences exist between Koshintō (the ancient Shintō) and the many types of Shintō taught and practiced today, showing the influences of Buddhism when it was introduced into Japan in the sixth century.[2]