His given name was Sannosuke. He graduated from the design course of the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts in 1910 and worked on designs for Nishijin textiles in Kyoto, but in 1918, set on Japanese painting, he entered the Kyoto Municipal Special School of Painting. While still a student his work was selected for the first Teiten in 1919, and the following year he entered Suisho Nishiyama’s Seikosha studio. In 1922 he joined the Kyumei-kai, and in 1923 visited China. In 1930 he became a teacher at the Municipal School of Arts and Crafts, and in 1933 founded his own Tokyusha studio. He also painted many sliding doors, ceilings and pillars for temples in Kyoto, among them Daitoku-ji and Ninna-ji. After serving as assistant professor he became a professor at the Kyoto Municipal Special School of Painting in 1936, and in 1944 an Imperial Household Artist. After the war he took contemporary manners as his subject. Following a journey to Europe in 1952 he turned to abstract painting, holding solo exhibitions of abstract work in Paris and New York and winning a high international reputation. In 1961 he received the Order of Culture and was named a Person of Cultural Merit. In 1966 he founded, to his own design, the Domoto Museum for his own work (now the Insho-Domoto Museum of Fine Arts, Kyoto Prefecture).