Munakata Shiko was born in Aomori Prefecture and worked as his father's assistant as a blacksmith in his youth. At the age of 19 he became employed in an office and began painting outdoors in his spare time, modeling his work and attire after Vincent van Gogh. He and friends organized themselves into a society and held exhibitions of their works. In 1924 Munakata moved to Tokyo to study oil painting, and his first painting was accepted for exhibition in the Teiten's Western-style painting section in 1928. But, just as he began to win a reputation in painting, he began to have doubts about the legitimacy of oil painting as a medium for a Japanese artist. He turned to wood-block printing, introduced to the tools by the print maker Hiratsuka Un'ichi (b. 1895). Munakata's primary subject matter was Buddhist themes, which he rendered also in paintings using traditional materials. His first important patron was Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961), an art critic and a founder of the Japanese Craft Movement. Yanagi bought a series of prints in 1936 for the new Japanese Folk Art Museum (Nihon Mingei-kan), and Munakata was drawn into the Folk Art movement. Munakata founded the Nihon Hanga in 1951, an association to support print artists, and was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit in 1970.

Munakata's Buddhist themes were no doubt encouraged by Yanagi, whose own philosophy was based upon Buddhist ideals. The painting offered here depicts one such Buddhist image; Acala, or Fudo Myo-o, is the fierce manifestation of a Buddha; his role is to suppress ignorance and rescue the lost. Munakata depicts this theme through a riot of color and line, a flaming background and the traditional attributes of weapons and fangs. At the same time, Munakata's own positive nature and the essentially salvationist message of the deity's role in Buddhism is revealed in the rather ingenuous treatment of the expression and the free, almost child-like quality of the drawing.