In 1897 he moved to Tokyo with his elder brother Koshu Imamura, also a Japanese-style painter, and entered Fuko Matsumoto’s Angado studio. In 1900 he joined the Shiko-kai (later renamed the Koji-kai), which held study meetings actively; he showed there until it disbanded in 1913. In 1902 he joined the Japan Art Institute. He visited the Institute’s research studio after it moved to Izura in Ibaraki Prefecture and worked under Tenshin Okakura. At the first Kokuga Gyokusei-kai exhibition “Tokimune” took second place in the third class of prizes. In 1911 “Gokarin” received an honourable mention at the fifth Bunten, and at the sixth Bunten “Eight Views of Omi” (Important Cultural Property) took third place in the second class — fine works came one after another. As a leading figure among the young painters of the next generation, along with Taikan Yokoyama, he greatly influenced the painters of his time. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of thirty-five.