The Empire of Japan endeavored, through education initiatives and specific financial support for new shrines, to frame Shinto practice as a patriotic moral tradition. From the early Meiji era, the divine origin of the Emperor was the official position of the state, and taught in classrooms not as myth, but as historical fact. Shinto priests were hired to teach in public schools, and cultivated this teaching, alongside reverence for the Emperor and compulsory class trips to shrines. State Shinto practitioners also emphasized the ritual aspect as a traditional civic practice that did not explicitly call on faith to participate.