Zao Gongen is a deity between Shinto and Buddhism. Gongen, literally "incarnation", was believed to be the manifestation of a Buddha in the form of an indigenous kami, during the era of shinbutsu-shūgō in pre-modern Japan. Shinbutsu-shūgō is the syncretism of Buddhism and kami worship that was Japan's only organized religion up until the Meiji period. Beginning in 1868, the new Meiji government approved laws that separated Japanese native kami worship and Buddhism in an attempt to re-organize the spiritual beliefs of the Japanese people and modernize the country.