Bannai Kôkan was born in Fukushima Prefecture in 1900 under the name Sadao. He studied Japanese-style painting with Bannai Seiran (1881-1936), whose name he adopted. In the 1930s, the publisher Watanabe Shosaburo selected three of his paintings for publication as prints: "Nihonbashi Bridge under snow," "Dawn over the Old Castle," and "Lake Ashinoko, Hakone."
