Torii Tadakiyo was born in Tokyo in 1875. He was a painter as well as woodblock print artist for the Kabuki theatre. He was the son of Torii Kiyosada and the adopted father of Torii Kotondo. At the age of 18 he became the pupil of the Tosa style painter Kawabe Mitate and soon he began producing pictures and advertisements for the Kabuki-za, Shintomi-za, and Meiji-za. He also made Russo-Japanese war prints. On many of his prints he used the name Kiyotada, and he is more generally known as Torii Kiyotada (VII).
