Born in Ehime Prefecture, Inoue first appeared on stage at age 17.

[2] He soon became a prominent performer in shinpa theater, and in 1910 founded the Shin Jidaigeki Kyōkai.

[2] He also started his own acting school in 1936 and was elected to the Japan Art Academy in 1949.

[1][2] Inoue was an early supporter of cinema and directed a reformist film, The Captain's Daughter (Taii no musume, 1917) for Kobayashi Shōkai, at the time of the Pure Film Movement.

He is most famous in the West for his starring role in Teinosuke Kinugasa's experimental masterpiece A Page of Madness (1926), which he helped support by refusing payment for his services.