Hongan-ji Nagoya Betsuin traces its origins to around 1500 CE, when Renjun, the thirteenth child of the chief abbot Rennyo, built Gansho-ji temple amid the Japanese cedar groves of Ise Province. The temple belonged to the Jodo Shinshu school of Buddhism, a Pure Land tradition founded by Shinran in the thirteenth century that emphasized faith over ritual and became one of the most widely practiced forms of Buddhism in Japan. Gansho-ji fell on hard times over the decades, was renovated, and eventually relocated to its current site in central Nagoya during the early Edo period, when Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered the construction of Nagoya Castle and the surrounding castle town took shape. The temple found a powerful patron in Baisho-in, concubine of Tokugawa Tsunanari, lord of the Owari Domain from 1652 to 1699. Her support helped establish the temple as a significant presence in the city's religious life.

Hokusai was fifty-seven years old in 1817, already famous, restless, and perpetually in search of new challenges. His visit to Hongan-ji Nagoya Betsuin produced one of the most extraordinary artistic performances in Japanese history. The Great Daruma painting required a sheet of paper so enormous it had to be laid flat on the ground. Hokusai directed his disciples as they helped manipulate brushes and ink across the vast surface, completing the image before a crowd of impressed spectators. The feat earned him the honorific "Darusen." Though the original painting was destroyed in the 1945 bombings, promotional handbills from the 1817 event survived and are preserved at the Nagoya City Museum. On November 23, 2017, the temple hosted a public recreation of the painting to mark the two-hundredth anniversary, using the same dimensions, techniques, and materials as the original. A prayer ceremony followed to bless the reproduction.

In May 1945, American firebombing raids devastated Nagoya, and Hongan-ji Nagoya Betsuin was not spared. The wooden main hall and its accumulated artwork were largely destroyed. When the time came to rebuild, the temple's architects made a striking choice: rather than replicate the traditional Japanese wooden structure, they designed the new main hall in the style of ancient Indian Mauryan Dynasty architecture. The result is a building that looks nothing like a conventional Buddhist temple in Japan -- a deliberate echo of Buddhism's origins on the Indian subcontinent. The choice mirrors that of Tsukiji Hongan-ji in Tokyo, another Honganji branch temple rebuilt with Indian-inspired architecture after disaster. Meanwhile, just south of the temple, a medical training center had been established in 1874 that would eventually evolve into Nagoya University's School of Medicine, later relocated to Tennozaki on the banks of the Hori River. The temple's neighborhood has always been a place where institutions put down roots.

While the firebombing destroyed the main hall, the temple's wooden bell tower -- its shoro -- survived the war undamaged. Said to have been donated by Baisho-in in 1729, during the Kyoho era, the tower is an unusual example of its form: the bell hangs from the lower level rather than the upper, departing from the typical Japanese bell tower design. The carved sculptures adorning the structure are considered high quality, and in 2017, the tower was designated a City Cultural Property. Today the shoro stands as the oldest surviving structure on the temple grounds, a physical bridge across centuries of upheaval. On the grounds nearby, a bronze statue of Shinran, founder of Jodo Shinshu, commemorates the religious tradition that has sustained this place through five hundred years of relocation, patronage, spectacle, destruction, and reinvention. The temple also serves a practical modern purpose: its ground floor houses the ashes of deceased persons in metal urns, with monks available to perform prayer services for families by request.