Buddhism in Japan movement to eradicate Buddhism and bring Shinto to ascendancy arose throughout the country due to the strong connections of Buddhism to the Shōguns. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), after a coup in 1868, Japan abandoned its feudal system and opened up to Western modernism. Shinto became the state religion. Within the Buddhist establishment the Western world was seen as a threat as well as a challenge to stand up to. Buddhist institutions had a simple choice: adapt or perish. Rinzai and Soto Zen chose to adapt, trying to modernize Zen in accord with Western insights, while simultaneously maintaining a Japanese
Doctrinal background of Zen we conceive of is the result of the working of the five skandhas—results of perception, feeling, volition, and discrimination. The five skandhas together compose consciousness. The "things" we are conscious of are "mere concepts", not "Ding an sich". It took Chinese Buddhism several centuries to recognize that sunyata does not refer to "wu", "nothingness", nor does Buddhism postulate an undying soul. The influence of those various doctrinal and textual backgrounds is still discernible in Zen. Zen teachers still refer to Buddha-nature, but the Zen tradition also emphasizes that Buddha-nature "is" sunyata, the absence of an independent and substantial self. In