Born in Yokohama on July 8, 1908 (Meiji 41), and raised in Kobe. His given name was Shinkichi. He entered the Japanese painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (today Tokyo University of the Arts) in 1926, studying under Yuki Somei. From 1933 to 1935 he studied art history at the University of Berlin in Germany, absorbing European landscapes and Western art. After returning he was repeatedly selected at exhibitions including the New Bunten, but during the Pacific War in 1945, at 37, he was conscripted into the Kumamoto Infantry Regiment and was demobilized after defeat. Through postwar hardship and the successive deaths of his father, mother, and younger brother, his 'Zansho' (Afterglow), shown at the 3rd Nitten in 1947, established him as a Japanese painter. His representative 'Michi' (The Road, 1950, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), with its motif of a horse path on the Tanesashi coast of Aomori, presented an extremely simplified composition depicting only a single road, opening new ground in Japanese painting. He received the Japan Art Academy Prize in 1955 and the Order of Culture in 1969. In the 1970s, his postwar revisit to Germany became the occasion for the 'Landscapes with a White Horse' series (such as 'Midori Hibiku' (Green Resounding) of 1972). From 1968 to 1971 he spent ten years completing 68 panels of partition paintings for the Mieido at Toshodai-ji ('Sanun,' 'Tosei,' 'Yoshu Kunpu,' 'Keirin Gessho,' 'Kozan Gyoun'). He died at his home in Ichikawa, Chiba, on May 6, 1999, at 90.

Taciturn and introspective, he infused his canvases with a quiet spirituality. The deep sense of loss from losing his family early was sublimated into the motifs of the 'lonely road,' 'silent forest,' and 'white horse.' He fused the Romantic spirit learned in his German student days with the traditional techniques of Japanese painting, and traveled all over Japan and the world in seeking 'the beautiful landscapes of Japan' — a painter of the way-seeking sort. With restrained blues and greens as his keynote, he established a unique pictorial ground that clears the heart of the viewer.

The greatest representative of postwar Japanese painting. His representative works — 'The Road,' 'Afterglow,' 'Green Resounding,' the 'Landscapes with a White Horse' series, and the partition paintings of the Mieido at Toshodai-ji — were deeply loved by the nation as works symbolizing the inner landscape of postwar Japan. The Higashiyama Kaii Gallery of the Nagano Prefectural Museum of Art holds about 970 works, and the Higashiyama Kaii Memorial Museum in Ichikawa, Chiba, is another principal museum. Many works are also held by the imperial household, the Prime Minister's Office, and the National Diet Building. His books such as 'Dialogue with Landscape' and 'My Window' are widely read, and as a painter he is also highly regarded as a fine essayist.