Born on September 8, 1864 in Nihonmatsu, Adachi County, Iwashiro Province (Nihonmatsu City, Fukushima Prefecture). He graduated from the Normal School of the same prefecture (now Fukushima University) and became an elementary school teacher, then went to Tokyo in 1885 to work as a journalist for an academic magazine. He gave lectures on ceramics at the Tokyo Fine Arts School (now Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music), presided over the editorial department of the Japan Art Institute, and served as vice president of the Japan Painting Association during Tenshin’s foreign trips. In 1907, he was nominated as the chief secretary of the editorial committee for “History of Japanese Ceramics in the Early Modern Period,” a project of the Dainippon Kiln Association, and spent the next ten years conducting field surveys of ceramic sites all over Japan and writing the book. This work was praised by the world as an unprecedented work of its kind. He died on February 3, 1946, at the age of 83.
