His given name was Seizaburo. Born in Wakayama, he moved to Tokyo with his family in 1881 and entered the school of Hogai Kano in 1882; in 1886, on Hogai’s introduction, he studied under Gaho Hashimoto. In 1889 he entered the Japanese painting course of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts when it opened; among his classmates were Taikan Yokoyama and Kogetsu Saigo. He graduated in 1894 in the school’s second cohort and became an assistant professor there, but in 1898 he resigned along with Gaho, Taikan and Shunso Hishida in solidarity with the dismissed principal Tenshin Okakura, and took part with them in founding the Japan Art Institute, of which he became a full member. In 1901 he returned to the Tokyo School of Fine Arts as a professor, and in 1903 became the school’s first student sent abroad by the Ministry of Education, studying in England. He left many works of the highest quality, marked by sure technique and a deep understanding of Eastern painting.