Gyojin Murakami was born in Inoshima, Hiroshima Prefecture, on March 1st of 1911. While working for the Hitachi Shipbuilding Company in Hiroshima he trained himself as an amateur painter, and this continued after he had moved to Kobe to work for the JR Takatori Company. As a painter he made both oil paintings and Japanese-style paintings. After the war he felt he had been given a second chance at life and he started using his artist's name (Gyojin, literally "Dawn person").

When the Minatogawa temple in Kobe was being rebuilt in Kobe after the war, the great printmaker Shiko Munakata asked him to join in the project of decorating the ceiling of the prayer room. He became Munakata's pupil and joined the Banga-in, founded by Munakata in 1952, and since 1984 better known as the Nihon Hanga-in. He started to live in Akashi city (west of Kobe), near the sea, and the theme of the sea is a recurrent theme in his work.

Gyojin Murakami died on May 21st, 1998.