Born in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1886, Shunsen (born Yoshinosuke) Natori was a nihonga style painter, graphic illustrator, and shin hanga artist specializing in kabuki portraiture. He is widely considered to be one of the most talented and prolific artists to head the third thrust of ukiyo-e revival from 1915 onwards. 

Shunsen was raised in metropolitan Tokyo after his family moved to the capital in 1887. At the age of eleven, he began learning painting techniques from Kubota Beisen, a book illustrator and designer of Sino-Russo Japanese war triptychs, as well as his successor Kinsen. Shunsen also studied under Hirafuku Hyakusui, who had a great influence on the young artist and introduced him to Musei-kai, a society dedicated to expressing greater realism in nihonga painting. While continuing his studies at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, Shunsen exhibited at Inten in 1906. After graduating, he was hired as a graphic artist in 1909 for the literary section of the newspaper Tokyo Asahi Shinbun. His growing reputation as an illustrator throughout the late Meiji era soon led to several book illustrations assignments, most notably Natsume Soseki's last serialized novel Meian (Light and Darkness). 

Alongside his work, Shunsen continued his activities as a painter and joined several nihonga painting societies. In 1915, he contributed thirty portraits and two cover subjects to the anthology (Shibai) Shin Nigao-e (The Theatre: New Portraits of Actors), thereby establishing himself as a designer of actor prints. That same year, Shunsen co-founded the Sangokai (Coral Society), which served as a forum for the exchange of ideas and art. 

In 1916, Shunsen met publisher Watanabe Shozaburo at an event at the Gahakudo gallery, and the two entered into an artistic collaboration that would continue for nearly four decades. Watanabe quickly issued the first of Shunsen's actor prints entitled Nakamura Ganjiro I as Kamiya Jihei (1916) and Baiko in the Role of Otomi (1917). Printed in the okubi-e format and embellished with mica, Shunsen used softly modulated colors in the manner of the Maruyama-Shijo school and adapted Western methods of drawing with light-colored lines. The resulting work described the actors' facial features more naturally and showed a deeper interest in the personalities and human qualities of the characters, also seen in the later work Nakamura Kichiemon as Mitsuhide (1925). 

Shunsen became an associate member of Saiko Nihon Bijutsu-in in 1918 and gave up nihonga the following year to concentrate on newspaper illustrations, cartoons, and actor portraits. Such portraits included not only Kabuki actors but also stars of cinema and female actors. From 1925 to 1929, a series of thirty-six Portraits of Actors in Various Roles was published by Watanabe and featured at the 1930 Toledo Exhibition. It was further augmented by an additional fifteen-print set entitled Shunsen's Portrait Collection, five of which were displayed at the second Toledo Exhibition in 1936. 

In 1930, Shunsen served as secretary of the Nihon Geiga Kyokai (Japanese Theatrical Painters Association), and his final set, Portraits of Contemporary Actors in Contemporary Plays, was published circa 1952. In total, Shunsen produced more than eighty actor prints, considered to be the best and most genuinely theatrical of the shin hanga movement. 

Despite his massive popularity and professional success, Shunsen suffered from severe depression. After the death of his daughter in 1958, Shunsen and his wife committed double suicide at their family tomb at the Kotoku temple in Aoyama. He was seventy-four years old.