Born into a religious Buddhist family in 1906, Shinjo Ito worked as an aircraft engineer until 1936, when he entered the Daigoji monastery in Kyoto, the head temple for the Daigo school of Shingon Buddhism. It was during his initial period of training that Shinjo Ito made his first Buddhist work of art, Achalanatha (1937) to express his determination to master the esoteric Shingon teachings.

Determined to make the path of enlightenment accessible to lay practitioners, he began an intensive reading of the classics of Buddhism. He found what he was looking for in the Nirvana Sutra, which became the central text of his nascent order, founded with his wife Tomoji. As the order grew from a handful of followers to almost a million members, Shinjo Ito created many works of art to reveal the Buddha nature immanent in all sentient beings. He passed away in 1989 and was succeeded by his daughter, Her Holiness Shinso Ito.