Born in Aomori Prefecture Munakata Shiko worked in his father's blacksmith shop as a young man. He began painting outdoors at age nineteen, emulating Vincent van Gogh in both his attire and painting style. Even at this early stage in his career, Munakata gathered a group of young artists around him, to form a cultural organization that exhibited the work of its members.

Munakata went to Tokyo in 1924 to study oil painting and was accepted in Teiten's Western-style painting exhibition of 1928. Though his first few years in Tokyo garnered the young painter a degree of recognition, he began to doubt the legitimacy of non-traditional oil paint as a medium for a Japanese artist. He was introduced to the woodblock print at this time by the printmaker Hiratsuka Un'ichi (1895-?) and, taking Buddhist themes as his primary subject matter, Munakata made prints and paintings with traditional Japanese materials.

Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961) was Munakata's first important patron. As an art critic and founder of the Japanese Craft Movement, Yanagi's influence on Munakata was far-reaching and he purchased a series of the artist's prints in 1936 for the new Japanese Folk Art Museum (Nihon Mingei-kan). Munakata was thus drawn into the folk art movement and in 1959 he founded the Nihon Hangakai, an association of printmakers. He received the Order of Cultural Merit in 1970.