Faith in Buddhism worship and other devotional routines as corruptions of an ideal, rational form of Buddhism, while assimilating Victorian and other modern values and designating them as traditional Buddhist, often without awareness of their roots. In Japan, from the Meiji period onward, the Japanese heavily attacked Buddhism as a foreign and superstitious belief system. In response to this, Buddhist schools such as Zen developed a movement called "New Buddhism" ("Japanese: shin bukkyo"), emphasizing rationalism, modernism and warrior ideals. Still in Japanese Buddhism, in the twentieth century, a critical response to traditional Buddhism arose, led by the two academics Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto
Buddhism in Japan particular, represents almost every strand of Buddhist teachings and practices. However, in comparison to Chinese or Korean Buddhist schools that are generally more united and less sectarian in their groupings, Buddhist denominations in Japan have developed into independent sects with autonomous organizations that have differing emphases on the doctrine and separate lay followings." (Authors: Kawananami, Partridg, and Woodhead page 82.)]In the post-Meiji, pre-WWII period, there were officially 13 schools and 56 branches () of traditional Buddhism (i.e., those not established in modern times). The official schools included three from the Nara period, two from the Heian period (Tendai and Shingon),