Of the many contemporary artists that emerged during the early modern period, Kawakami Sumio is perhaps the most cosmopolitan in terms of style and thematics. A sosaku hanga artist, poet, bookmaker, and teacher, Kawakami is most noted for historically themed namban prints. His preoccupation with foreign cultures can be traced back to his upbringing in Yokohama, a major port city and international trading hub. His father, a journalist and manufacturer, was a champion of Western culture and had his son enrolled in a mission school. As a young adult, Kawakami moved to Tokyo to attend the Aoyama Gakuin high school. After graduating in 1916, his father sent him to live abroad in the United States. 

After a brief stint painting houses in Seattle and canning fish in Alaska (1917–1918), Kawakami moved to Chicago to pursue a career as an artist. Then disaster struck. The sudden death of his brother prompted Kawakami to return home, and after a time, he settled into a position teaching English until 1942. During this period, Kawakami pursued art as a hobby, intermittently submitting works to art-literary magazines. It was through this exchange that he met Hiratsuka Un'ichi, and soon afterward began making prints in earnest. His popularity as an artist surged. 

Kawakami became a founding member of the Nihon Hanga Kyokai and later joined and exhibited with the Kokuga Sosaku Kyokai in 1924. Five years later, he joined the Nihon Sosaku Hanga Kyokai, and throughout the 1930s featured in Shun'yokai and Kokugakai. Anticipating the birth of their child, Kawakami and his wife moved in with his in-laws in Hokkaido in 1945. For four years, they lived in the northern frontier before returning to the mainland in 1949. Upon his return, Kawakami was awarded the Tochigi prefectural prize for his contributions to the cultural arts. In 1958, the Japan Folk Art Society exhibited two hundred of his works, and in 1974, major exhibitions were held in the Tochigi Prefectural Art Museum and Riccar Art Museum. Kawakami's works often feature humorous, romantic images of foreigners in Japan, such as Nanbanesque Behavior (1945). The majority of his works were often printed with a single block in black and colored by hand. In addition to his hanga, he carved eight-hundred ideographs and thirty-three hand-printed, self-carved mokuhan books. A highly imaginative and prolific artist, Kawakami Sumio passed away in 1972 at the age of seventy-seven.