Born in Iwate Prefecture. He moved to Tokyo and studied at Waseda Middle School while attending the Hakubakai institute, learning Western painting from Kotaro Nagahara and others. After graduating in 1906 he went to America, but returned the same year, and in 1907 entered the preparatory course of the Western painting section of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. He showed at the Hakubakai exhibitions while still a student, and in 1911 formed the Absinthe Society with Kohho Hiroshima and others. In 1912 his graduation work, the Fauvist “Nude Beauty”, drew attention, and in the same year he formed the Fyuzan-kai with Yori Saito, Shohachi Kimura, Ryusei Kishida and Kotaro Takamura. He later showed at the Nika exhibition, the Inten and the Shunyokai. Trying new directions such as Cubism, he brought his own manner to completion; “Leaning Figure” (1917) is regarded as the representative Cubist painting in Japan. He was quick to take up the Post-Impressionist and Fauvist painting then being introduced to Japan, and was strongly influenced by Van Gogh and Matisse in particular. He also studied Taiga Ike and Gyokudo Uragami and painted nanga.