of East Asia. Following Japan's defeat in World War II, Shinto was formally separated from the state. Shinto is primarily found in Japan, where there are around 100,000 public shrines, although practitioners are also found abroad. Numerically, it is Japan's largest religion, the second being Buddhism. Most of the country's population takes part in both Shinto and Buddhist activities, especially festivals, reflecting a common view in Japanese culture that the beliefs and practices of different religions need not be exclusive. Aspects of Shinto have been incorporated into various Japanese new religious movements. Definition There is no universally agreed definition of Shinto. However, the authors Joseph Cali and John Dougill stated that if there was "one single, broad definition of Shinto" that could be put forward, it would be that "Shinto is a belief in ", the supernatural entities at the centre of the religion. The Japanologist Helen Hardacre stated that "Shinto encompasses doctrines, institutions, ritual, and communal life based on worship", while the scholar of religion Inoue Nobutaka observed the term "Shinto" was "often used" in "reference to worship and related theologies, rituals and practices". Various scholars have referred to practitioners of Shinto as Shintoists, although this term has no direct translation in the Japanese language. Scholars have debated at what point in history it is legitimate to start talking about Shinto as a specific phenomenon. The scholar of religion Ninian Smart suggested that one could "speak of the religion of Japan, which lived symbiotically with organized Buddhism, and only later was institutionalized as Shinto." While several institutions and practices now associated with Shinto existed in Japan by the 8th century, various scholars have argued that Shinto as a distinct religion was essentially "invented" during the 19th century, in Japan's Meiji era. The scholar of religion Brian Bocking stressed that, especially when dealing with periods before the Meiji era, the term Shinto should "be approached with caution". Inoue Nobutaka stated that "Shinto cannot be considered as a single religious system that existed from the ancient to the modern period", while the historian Kuroda Toshio noted that "before modern times Shinto did not exist as an independent religion". Categorisation Many scholars describe Shinto as a religion, a term first translated into Japanese as shūkyō around the time of the Meiji Restoration. Some practitioners instead view Shinto as a "way", thus characterising it more as custom or tradition, partly as an attempt