In 1912, the newly-founded Taitung Sugar Company [zh] acquired a tract of land as part of the government's "immigration village" program.

The company wanted to use the land to plant sugarcane and persuaded a couple families from Niigata Prefecture to move to Longtian.

[1] Inside the new village, a small Shinto shrine was built on October 17, 1923 and moved to the current site of Kunci Temple on November 13, 1931.

[3][4] Outside of Kunci Temple, there is an eighty-year old chinaberry tree that is 20 m (66 ft) tall, which is more than two times bigger than the expected of the species.

In 1960, Tzu Chi founder, Cheng Yen, who at the time just became a nun, stayed at Kunci Temple for two months and would often have Dharma talk with other monastics under the tree.