His childhood name was Sentaro. His father, Seien Hashimoto, was a Kano-school painter in the service of the lord of the Hamada domain. Taught first by his father, at eleven he became a pupil of Masanobu Kano, on the same day as Hogai Kano. At about twenty-two he became head pupil, and with Hogai, Shogyoku Kano and Ritsugaku Kimura was called one of the four great pupils of Masanobu. He set up on his own at twenty-six, but in the disorder at the end of the shogunate commissions grew few and he supported his family by piecework such as fan painting. In 1866 he moved to Kawagoe when the domain was transferred, and in 1871, at thirty-six, lost his stipend with the abolition of the domains and entered the Ministry of Military Affairs; while employed on map-making he painted and studied alongside Hogai Kano. In 1889 he became a teacher in the painting course of the newly opened Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and a professor there in 1890. He was thereafter at the centre of the Meiji Japanese-painting world and one of the painters who represent modern Japanese painting; as a fine teacher he brought forward such painters as Taikan Yokoyama, Shunso Hishida, Kanzan Shimomura and Gyokudo Kawai.