Born in Kanda, Tokyo; his given name was Kenichi. In 1891 he studied under Toshikata Mizuno, a painter of genre subjects in the ukiyo-e line. To support his family he took on a great deal of newspaper illustration and frontispieces for books. But alongside the illustration he formed the Ugokai with friends, aiming to become a painter who could stand on his main work, and sought places to show Japanese painting. In 1909 his work was selected for the third Bunten, and while showing there he also formed, in 1916, the painting group Kinreisha with Eikyu Matsuoka and Hyakusui Hirafuku in order to bring forth an innovative Japanese painting, showing ambitious works one after another. In the course of this he was appointed a judge of the first Teiten in 1919 and became, in name and in fact, a painter who represented Japanese painting. In his last years after the war he lived in Kamakura, painting freely what he wished, and went on to the end painting the manners of the Tokyo downtown he loved and the beauties of his own day.