Sanzo Wada, painter and printmaker, was born in Hyogo prefecture, Japan, on March 3, 1883, the son of a government-appointed physician. Despite the protests of his family, Wada left school at age sixteen to study Western painting, first under the mentorship of famed painter Kuroda Seiki and then his White Horse Society school, and finally enrolling at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he studied Western style painting and art theory.

Following his graduation in 1904, he focused on his classical oil paintings of Japanese daily life. in 1908 he earned a sponsorship from the government to travel to Europe, where he remained until 1914 studying the work of European artists. It was in France that he met fellow Japanese artist Ya...