In the late 19th century Japanese religion was forever transformed by a government fiat declaring that Buddhism and Shinto were two separate religious traditions. This political order, officially distinguishing the deities, rituals, images, texts, and clergy of the two traditions, sought to erase and redefine the religious landscape of the previous millennium. The institutional and ideological effects of this action are still felt today in the common understanding of Buddhism and Shinto as individual and separate religions. To reveal the hidden history of Japanese religion and illuminate an obscured past that continues to inform our understanding of the present, this talk introduces and illustrates the complex relations between Buddhist and Shinto traditions in Japan. D. Max Moerman is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of Localizing Paradise: Kumano Pilgrimage and the Religious Landscape of Premodern Japan (Harvard, 2005) and the forthcoming Geographies of the Imagination: Buddhist Cosmology and the Japanese World Map, 1364-1865.