Tatsumi Shimura was born in 1907 in Takasaki in Gunma prefecture under the given name of Sentaro. In the 1920s he studied with Yamakawa Saiho and his son, Yamakawa Shuho. Like many Japanese artists in the first half of the twentieth century, Shimura Tatsumi made his living as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines. One of the magazines he worked for, was Fujokai - Women's World.
Parallel to his job as an illustrator he continued to work as a painter - specializing in bijin-ga, the genre of the depiction of beautiful women