In contemporary Japanese culture and religion. the emperor is a being that cannot be overlooked. The Japanese modem state was founded spiritually on state Shint6, which believes that the emperor is an incarnated god (Arahitogam1l , Japan is an imperial state and god`s kingdom(Kokoku). Such a distorted view of modem state not only brought severe damage to other Asian countries but also left an incurable wound in Japan and Japanese. The wound is the antinomic psychological situation of respect and affection for the emperor as a Japanese tradition as well as indelible rejection and fear of the tradition. Until the Meiji Restoration. however. the emperor was not a vital being to ordinary people. Of course. he was far from the current states as "the symbol of Japan." The present image was created with the establishment of the modern emperor system based on the theory of state Shinto as an effort to give authority to the Meiji government whose base of political power was unstable. The establishment of the modern emperor system. which was the religious and political compound of the emperor and Shinto, has transformed Japanese people`s view of religion considerably. Moreover. the negative influence is still continuing, This study purposed to review the modern emperor system that transformed Japanese people`s view of religion in the process of modernization through the historical development of the emperor and Shinto, and to discuss its meaning in the history of thought in order to explain how the emperor and Shinto-focusing on the modern emperor established as state Shinto-and what meanings it has.