Born in Kyoto, Miyagawa was taken with sumi-e Chinese ink painting from the age of eleven and began to sell his work as an illustrator while a teenager.

[2] Miyagawa cited the cinematography of Eiji Tsuburaya, Hiromitsu Karasawa [ja] and Kenzo Sakai as an influence on his career.

[2] He oversaw 164 cameramen for Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad (1965), a documentary which necessitated the development of new exposure meters and viewfinders.

[4] Earlier, he had worked with Ichikawa on the drama films, Enjō ("The Temple of the Golden Pavilion", 1958), Odd Obsession (aka, The Key, 1959) and The Broken Commandment (1962).

[1] Miyagawa is considered the inventor of the cinematographic technique known as bleach bypass, for Ichikawa's film Her Brother (1960).