The worship of Kangiten first started in Japan around the 8th-9th centuries CE as part of the ‘Shingon’ or ‘Mantra’ Buddhism. This was a Tantric form of Buddhism that had emerged from Odisha in India, which then travelled first to China and then to Japan. It was a Japanese scholar named Kukai (774-835 CE) who founded Shingon Buddhism in Japan. A civil servant and a scholar in the Imperial court, Kukai travelled to China in 804 CE, to learn Tantric Buddhism that had arrived there from India. There he met a noted Gandharan Buddhist scholar Pranja, a former student of Nalanda university, who introduced several important Buddhist texts to China.

Kukai would return to Japan a decade later, and introduce several Hindu deities and Tantric Buddhist teachings into the Japanese pantheon. Ganesha or Kangiten, too was introduced initially as a minor deity in Shingon Buddhism. It was only during what is known as a ’Heian Period’ (794-1185 CE), considered a ‘classical golden age’ in Japanese history that Kangiten emerged as an independent god. There are numerous references to Ganesha or Kangiten in ‘Besson Guides’, religious texts written during this time on the deities of Japan. One of the earliest texts regarding Ganesha worship in Japan is ‘Sho Kangiten Shikiho’ or ‘Ritual of Sho Kangiten’, composed sometime around 861 CE, that details various tantric rituals.