He graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1902, where he studied sculpture and oil painting.

Takamura additionally studied in London in 1907, where he met his best friend Bernard Leach.

[1] After finishing his studies in Paris in 1908, he returned to Japan in 1909[2] and lived there for the rest of his life.

Takamura and other artists were seen as leaders of a revolution in Japanese artwork.

[3] He is also famous for his poems, and especially for his 1941 collection Chiekoshō (智恵子抄, literally "Selections of Chieko", English title "Chieko's sky" after one of the poems therein), a collection of poems about his wife Chieko Takamura née Naganuma, the oil painter, paper artist and early member of the Japanese feminist movement, who died in 1938.