Nagase Yoshio was a sosaku hanga artist born on January 5, 1891, in Sakuragawa City, Ibaraki Prefecture. As a young student, Nagase had a diverse educational background. He studied Western-style painting at the Hakubakai Institute, specialized in sculpture at the Tokyo School of Fine Art, and learned nihonga at the Kyoto Specialist School of Painting. 

After graduating, he worked alongside artists Hasegawa Kiyoshi and Hiroshima Shintaro to publish the magazine Seihei in 1912 (renamed Kame the following year), providing mokuhanga cover art and illustrations until 1915. During this period, Nagase also exhibited his own hanga with the Nika-kai organization. After the publication of the magazine ceased, Nagase and his two friends established the Nihon Sosaku Hanga Kyokai in 1919, which held one of the very first exhibitions of sosaku hanga in Japan; indeed, it was a truly monumental event for a generation of contemporary artists. Nagase featured at the Kokuga Sosaku Kyokai that same year and later in 1922 published To People Who Want to Make Prints, a highly influential work on mokuhanga techniques. 

It was this particular work that inspired artist Taninaka Yasunori to pursue hanga, and in 1927 he sought out Nagase to become his pupil. Nagase obliged the young eccentric, and the two men worked together for two years until Nagase decided to travel abroad. From 1929 to 1936, he lived in France and was later represented in numerous exhibitions, including the Salon d'Automne, Banga-in, and the Tokyo International Print Biennale. After a brief stint as a war artist in China in 1939, Nagase returned to Japan and continued to experiment with styles and techniques in hanga until his death in 1978.