Noël Nouët was born in Brittany in 1985 in a family where his mother was collecting Hiroshige’s prints. In 1900, Noël Nouët settled in Paris to write poetry and met several Japanese artists in Parisian salons. He went to Japan to teach at the Shizuoka secondary school in 1926. After returning to France in 1930, he went back to Japan as a professor at the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages, then took over the management of the Maison Franco-Japonaise (French-Japanese House). There, he began sketching the Ginza and Kanda districts and sought out locations painted by Hiroshige. His drawings were published in the magazine France and the daily newspaper The Japan Times, as well as in books about Japan and on postcards.
His Tokyo sketches became popular, and Doi, a Tokyo publisher, had them made into prints. During World War II, he remained in Japan. His house in the Kōjimachi district burned down in the major air raid of March 1945. However, he continued sketching and produced drawings of ruined Tokyo landscapes, which were reproduced in his self-published album, Tokyo, 50 Drawings.
After the war, he taught at Waseda University in Tokyo and at other schools and universities. He also served as French tutor to the future Emperor Akihito (Heisei) in 1951. He returned to France in the early 1960s and died in Brittany in 1969.
