Fukuda Heihachiro was born in Oita Prefecture, but moved to Kyoto where he studied and worked. He was trained at the Kyoto Municipal College of Painting where he studied Maruyama-Shijo school painting with Takeuchi Seiho (1864-1942), Kikuchi Keigetsu (1879-1955), and others, graduating in 1918. The following year he had his first painting accepted in a major competitive exhibition, the government-sponsored Teiten. He returned to the Kyoto Municipal College of Painting as a teacher, remained a regular exhibitor with Teiten and became a Teiten judge in 1924. In 1947 he was elected to the Imperial Arts Academy, and in 1961 was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit. In 1930 Fukuda organized the Rokucho-kai with Yamaguchi Hoshun (1893-1971) and Nakamura Gakuryo (1890-1969), a society that also included Western-style oil painters and critics; the purpose of the society was to find ways to draw the metaphysical into their representations of the material world. (The name of the society, "six tides", indicates their various approaches to a single goal). Fukuda's style is based upon naturalistic description, the hallmark of Kyoto school painting, but the motifs and composition are then greatly simplified to capture their essential forms. To these compositions he adds a brightly colored and uniquely realized color palette that transforms his images, often intimate views of nature, beyond the commonplace.