Born in Saga, he moved to Tokyo in 1871. He studied first under Yukihiko Soyama and then under Masaaki Horie. In 1894, introduced by Keiichiro Kume, he came to know Seiki Kuroda and encountered the work of the plein-air school. He entered the Tenshin Dojo run by Kume and Kuroda, and in 1896 took part in founding the Hakubakai. In the same year, when the Western painting course of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts was established, he became an assistant professor. The following year he went to France as the first student sent abroad by the Ministry of Education, studying under Raphaël Collin, Kuroda’s teacher. He became a professor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. With “Harmony in Purple (Portrait of a Lady)”, and at the first Bunten, where he served as a judge, with “Lady in Red” and “Bush Clover”, he showed one portrait of a woman in kimono after another and made his name. In 1912 he founded the Hongo Institute of Western Painting with Takeji Fujishima. He painted nudes in landscapes filled with soft light, and also many landscapes and portraits. In 1937 he received the first Order of Culture.