[5] Kuniyoshi originally intended to study English and return to Japan to work as a translator.

[1] Kenneth Hayes Miller introduced Kuniyoshi to intaglio printmaking; he made approximately 45 such prints between 1916 and 1918.

Kuniyoshi was also known for his still-life paintings of common objects, and figurative subjects like female circus performers and nudes.

Kuniyoshi combined this with Western painting in the way he applies the bold colors in oil on canvas;[19] in Japan, traditional painters use ink on either silk or rice paper.

This painting was purchased and included in the Advancing American Art Exhibition by the US Department of State alongside other well-known modern artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Hopper.

Kuniyoshi's Circus Girl Resting received harsh criticism from President Harry Truman because of its exotic proportions, not because of its provocative nature.

[citation needed] His work was also part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.

[23] Kuniyoshi's "Artificial Flowers and Other Things" appeared in the Whitney Museum's "Second Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting," which ran from November 27, 1934, to January 10, 1935, and included the work of one other Japanese-American artist, Hideo Noda.

Rather, the artist drew from the model in the early stages of a painting but eventually stopped using her after about a week or so, and then would continue on from his memory, making adjustments as he saw fit.

[1] During World War II, he proclaimed his loyalty and patriotism as a propaganda artist for the United States.

[28] In the early 1950s, Kuniyoshi contracted cancer,[26] and ended his art career with a series of black-and-white drawings using sumi-e ink.