To facilitate his covert reconnaissance activities, he was posted in a Taoist school headed by Chen Lian, a priest who was also the master of Báilián Quán (白蓮門拳 Byakurenmon-ken).

This was Nakano's first experience with Chinese quan fa; he learned Báilián Quán under Chen while carrying out his assignment of making military maps and conducting geographic surveys throughout China.

In 1936 Wen formally passed his title of grandmaster of Yihe Quán to Nakano, at the Mount Song Shaolin Monastery, at Henan province.

This version of events is contested by martial arts historians such as Donn Draeger, who argues that, "[f]or Nakano to suggest that he, a foreigner, could succeed to a position of leadership over a Chinese martial arts tradition is to deliberately ignore Chinese tradition and to insult the intelligence of those whom he would have believe his claim".

The grim state of affairs in postwar Japan impressed him with the need of a restoration of morality and national pride and the creation of an entirely new human image.

Regarding the Dharma spirit and the practice of Kempo as means to achieve these ends, Sō revised, expanded, and systematized the many forms of quan fa he had learned in China, combined it with the Jūjutsu he had learned from his grandfather in his youth, and thus created Shorinji Kempo as it exists today.

Nearly 10 years after the foundation of Shorinji Kempo, Dōshin Sō married Harada Emiko on 20 January 1957, with whom he would remain with until the end of his life.

So was played by Japanese actor Sonny Chiba in the martial arts film Shorinji Kempo in 1975,[2] which was given the exploitative English title The Killing Machine.