A retainer of the Odawara domain. His given name was Ryusen and his courtesy name Hakuju; he was commonly known as Yunojo. Shuki was his art name, and in later years he also signed himself Shuo. He is said to have studied under Watanabe Kazan and then under Onishi Keisai, and is understood as belonging to the last generation of the Kanto literati school. With Tsubaki Chinzan and others he is counted among Kazan's ten leading pupils. He excelled at richly coloured bird-and-flower painting and is known for a dense, distinctive manner, but his output ranged widely, from heavy colour to ink monochrome and from large screens to small formats, taking in animals, fish and waterweeds, and figure subjects as well as birds and flowers. He was a central figure in the development of the Nagasaki manner in the later Edo period.