Kitano Tsunetomi was a well known bijin-ga printmaker and painter. His woodblock prints have a painterly quality, and look very similar to the scroll paintings on which they were based. He was born in Kanazawa in 1880 with the name Tomitaro. As a young man Tsunetomi worked as an apprentice to a woodblock carver after which he became a print carver for the newspaper Hokkoku Shinpo. He later moved to Osaka to study Nihon-ga style painting under Inano Toshitsune, a student of Yoshitoshi. In 1901, he began working as an illustrator for the newspaper Osaka Shinbun.