Kobayakawa Kiyoshi was born in Hakata, Kyushu. Around the age of 20 he entered Kiyokata's studio. Although Kiyoshi was to become an accomplished Nihonga painter of the bijin genre, relatively little documentation exists on the artist when compared to other artists of the period. Kiyoshi designed thirteen prints of beauties and his most important work, the six-print series beauties was privately published. It is not known why the prints in his most important series were not marketed through an established publisher. It might have been that the subject was too risky for a large-scale, commercial, and relatively conservative publisher like Watanabe Shōzaburō in that moga were more than symbols of a passing fashion statement. They were the emblems of the era, and their impact was such that the Japanese government banned in 1930 "the stockingless fad for girls in foreign style dress." In the same year employers fired female employees who were " forever staining their lips," while police rounded up women applying make-up in the streets! Kiyoshi himself defended his choice to portray a more contemporary vision of Japanese women: "I do not just draw customs and manners but try to capture the essence of the time in which we live.