Shinto eventually assumes an intellectual form as shaped by neo-Confucian rationalism and materialism.

The kokugaku movement emerges from the interactions of these two belief systems.

Kokugaku contributes to the emperor-centered nationalism of modern Japan and the revival of Shinto as a national creed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Kojiki, Nihongi, and Man'yoshu are all studied anew in the search for the Japanese spirit.

Some purists in the kokugaku movement even criticize the Confucian and Buddhist influences—in effect, foreign one —for contaminating Japan's ancient ways.

Japan is the land of the kami and, as such, has a special destiny.