Yamashita Shintarô studied Western-style painting with Kuroda Seiki at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in 1904. Like many of his contemporaries he went to France, after he had studied French at the Tokyo Foreign Language School. He was in France from 1905-07, and again from 1931-32. He received the Légion d'Honneur, and became a member of the Imperial Fine Art Academy in 1936. After WWII a number of lithographs and woodblock prints showing the scenery of Nara and Kyoto were published.
