One of Okakura Tenshin's pupils along with Yokoyama Taikan and Shimomura Kanzan, he played a role in the Meiji era innovation of Nihonga.

The following year, he enrolled at the Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō (the forerunner of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music).

Shunsō, Taikan and Kanzan were heavily influenced by Okakura Tenshin and Ernest Fenollosa during their time at the Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō.

Shunsō came to realize that while moro-tai was effective in depicting such scenes as morning mist and evening glow, its color gradation technique proved good only for those limited motifs.

His representative work "Ochiba" is based on the motif of a thicket of trees around Yoyogi, Tokyo, Japan, which was still a suburb at the time.