Born in Osaka, Japan, Shinohara studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts from 1952 to 1954, studying composition with Tomojirō Ikenouchi, piano with Kazuko Yasukawa [ja], and conducting with Akeo Watanabe and Kurt Wöss.
From 1954 to 1960, he studied in Paris with Tony Aubin, Olivier Messiaen, Simone Plé-Caussade, Pierre Revel and Louis Fourestier.
From 1962 to 1964 he studied at the Hochschule für Musik München and at the Siemens-Studio für elektronische Musik [de]; following this he studied with Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Gottfried Michael Koenig at the Rheinische Musikschule [de] in Cologne and then with Karlheinz Stockhausen from 1964 to 1965.
In 1971, he was awarded the Rockefeller Prize from the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center and in 1978 won a scholarship from the Dutch government.
In 1978 Shinohara was a visiting professor of composition at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.