From Ibaraki Prefecture; his given name was Shintaro. He graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo University of the Arts) and studied under Karyo Sakurai and Gyokusho Kawabata. He won prizes repeatedly at the Japan Painting Association’s joint exhibitions and joined Tenshin Okakura’s new art movement. At the revival of the Japan Art Institute he showed paintings of birds and flowers and Buddhist paintings that drew on his fine technique and sense of colour, working for the Institute alongside Taikan Yokoyama and Kanzan Shimomura.