Career
In his lifetime, he was best known as a player of the Chinese seven-string zither, the guqin, but people came to appreciate his paintings after his death. After working as a samurai for the Ikeda daimyo, he left his position for ideological reasons to devote himself to travel and the arts One of his music works, the Gyokudō kinpu 玉堂琴譜, is available online
An excerpt is available Uragami Gyokudō and the chinese zither guqin based on the book Tall Mountains and Flowing Waters.
The Arts of Uragami Gyokudō by Stephen Addiss, University of Hawaii Press, 1987.