After graduating from Nara Women’s Higher Normal School she taught at high schools in Nagoya and Yokohama while studying under Yukihiko Yasuda. In 1926 “Cucumbers” was selected for the thirteenth Inten at her first attempt, and she was selected without a break thereafter. In 1932 she became the first woman elected a member of the Japan Art Institute. Taking her subjects from what was near at hand — figures and still life — she composed her pictures by boldly contrasting colour and simplifying form, a highly modern approach that brought a new change to Japanese painting in the Showa period. She received the Order of Culture in 1980, and died in 2000 at the age of 105.