Terazaki Kôgyô was born in the former province of Dewa (present-day Akita Prefecture) on February 25, 1866. He was the son of a samurai chieftain, and his grandfather had served the Akita domain as a high-ranking samurai officer (karō). After the Meiji Restoration, Terazaki's father failed in business, and the family experienced hardship.
Terazaki Kôgyô began his painting studies under Komuro Hidetoshi, a member of the Kanō school. He then went to Tokyô, where in 1888 he became a student of Suian Hirafuku (ja), of the Shijō school, and later of Hakuryu Sugawara (d), a Nanga painter. Kôgyô was later discovered by Okakura Kakuzō, director of the Tokyô School of Fine Arts, who offered him a position as an assistant professor in 1898. Unfortunately, Okakura was dismissed from the institution a year later, which prompted Kôgyô to distance himself as well.
Okakura founded the Nihon Bijutsu-in (日本美術院, lit. "Japan Private Art Institute") in the same year, dedicated to nihonga, a style seeking to revitalize traditional Japanese painting in reaction to its "Westernization" that began during the Meiji era. Kôgyô joined the faculty, along with several other artists such as Hashimoto Gahō, Yokoyama Taikan, and Shimomura Kanzan.
In 1901, Kôgyô obtained a tenured professorship at the Tokyô School of Fine Arts, and then joined the Imperial Japanese Army as a painter when the Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904.
Following a fire in 1893 in which Kôgyô lost all his possessions, the artist made a radical shift in his career, deciding to break with traditional painting.
He then produced numerous kuchi-e (prints), frontispieces for the Hakubunkan publishing house, and for the literary magazine Bungei Kurabu (文芸倶楽部) between 1897 and 1912. During the Russo-Japanese War, he created senso-e (戦争絵?lit. "war prints") as well as lithographic illustrations.
Kôgyô produced many historical paintings of the Meiji era, but his main subjects were landscapes.
In 1907, he submitted his works to the first Bunten, the exhibition organized by the Japanese Academy of Arts,[a] where he served as a judge and participated again as an artist in subsequent editions. A prolific painter of Bijin-ga (美人画, lit. "paintings of beautiful people") (and more specifically, beautiful women), he contributed to the establishment of the genre at this exhibition.
In 1917, Kôgyô received the honorary title of Artist of the Imperial Household.
Terazaki Kôgyô fell ill shortly afterward and died on February 21, 1919 of a throat cancer.
