During the Tokugawa shogunate, the system was turned into a citizen registration network; supposedly intended to stop the diffusion of Christianity and help detect hidden Christians, it soon became a government-mandated and Buddhist temple-run system to monitor and control the population as a whole. For this reason, it survived intact long after Christianity in Japan had been eradicated. The system as it existed in Tokugawa times is sometimes called terauke system (寺請制度 terauke seido) because of the certification (or terauke, because the tera, or temple would issue an uke, or certificate) issued by a Buddhist temple that a citizen was not a Christian. The mandatory danka system was officially abolished after World War II, but continues nonetheless to exists as a voluntary association between the two sides, constitutes a major part of the income of most temples and defines as before the relationship between households and temples.

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