Born in 1831 at what is now Koga, Ibaraki Prefecture, the second son of the samurai Kiemon Kawanabe. At seven he entered the school of the ukiyo-e artist Kuniyoshi, and at ten studied under Towa Maemura of the Surugadai Kano line and then under its head, Tohaku Chinshin Kano, completing his training at nineteen with the art name “Toiku Chinshi”. But by then it was the end of the shogunate, and since it was hard to live as a Kano painter he made his living under names such as “Kyosai” (the mad one) with ukiyo-e, comic pictures and lantern paintings. In October 1870 he was arrested over his brush, but was released in the first month of the following year, changed the writing of his name to “Kyosai” (the dawn one) and resumed work as a painter. He then showed paintings at the Philadelphia World Exposition of 1876, and in the same year associated with the French businessman Émile Guimet, who visited Japan, and the painter Félix Régamey who came with him, so that his work became widely known abroad. In 1881 he showed “Crow on a Bare Branch in the Cold” at the second National Industrial Exhibition and received the second-class prize for excellence, the highest award for Japanese painting, gaining official recognition as well.