One of the most highly successful and renowned sosaku hanga artists of the second-third generation, Saito Kiyoshi, was born in 1907 in Sakamoto, Fukushima Prefecture. After moving to the port city of Otaru, Hokkaido, at the age of five, he studied drawing techniques under Narita Gyokusen before operating his own sign painting shop. After several years, Saito sold the business and moved to Tokyo in 1932 to become an artist. He enrolled in the Hongo Institute's Western-style painting division and began exhibiting oils through the Hakujitsukai, Nikakai, Kokugakai, and Tokokai organizations. After exhibiting with Nihon Hanga Kyokai in 1936 and having several mokuhanga accepted at the Kokugakai exhibition the following year, Saito began seriously considering hanga as a professional medium. 

From the late 1930s through the postwar period, the young artist joined a number of organizations that greatly augmented his professional success. In 1938, Saito joined the Zokei Hanga Kyokai (Plastic Print Association) at the request of fellow artist Ono Tadashige; in addition, he served as an active member of Ichimokukai (1943), Nihon Hanga Kyokai (1944) and Kokugakai (1950). After the war, Saito resumed artistic production and exhibition with a renewed sense of vigor; notably, he sold his first print in 1945 at a gallery event in Tokyo and soon caught the attention of American connoisseurs. In 1951, he shocked the art world by taking first prize for a mokuhanga print, Steady Gaze, (1950), at the first Sao Paulo Biennale. 

Saito went on to win major prizes at international competitions in Ljubljana in 1956 and later exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe. He served briefly as a printmaking instructor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, from 1955 to 1957 before retiring several years later. Saito Kiyoshi passed away in 1997 at the age of ninety.