His original surname was Takeda; his given name was Shin’ichi. In 1904 he was adopted into the Murakami family, into which his aunt had married. He graduated from the painting course of the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts in 1907, and in 1909 entered the newly founded Kyoto Municipal Special School of Painting, transferring into the second year of the main course. Taught by Seiho Takeuchi and Shunkyo Yamamoto, he graduated in 1911 in the school’s first cohort together with Hako Irie, Shiho Sakakibara, Bakusen Tsuchida and Chikkyo Ono, and went on to the research course (completed 1913). While still a student his work was selected for the Bunten in 1908, and he won prizes at the exhibitions of new and old art thereafter. In 1916 he joined the second Mitsuritsu-kai, and Taikan Yokoyama urged him to join the Japan Art Institute. In 1918 he founded the Kokuga Sosaku Kyokai with Bakusen Tsuchida and others, but in 1928 the association was dissolved for want of funds and he became a supporting member of the Shinjusha. From about 1921 he began to suffer attacks of asthma; in 1923 he left Kyoto for Ashiya, and in 1927 returned to his adoptive family in Kobe, living apart from the art world and giving form to a pictorial world of high spirituality with the hills of Rokko, peonies, and the Buddha and bodhisattvas as his subjects.