Painter and printmaker Fukutaro Terauchi was born on December 9, 1891. His formal art education began at the Kiyoteru Kuroda private school in 1910, and he was a member of the Hakuda art association. He was primarily active before the Second World War, especially in Western-style watercolor, and many of his woodcuts are found to have been published in the 1950s and '60s by the Kyoto Hanga-in Publishing Company. 

Much of his life remains a mystery, including his death date, which is often listed as being in 1964 but for which there is no concrete evidence. His name is often confused with that of artist Manjiro Tenauchi, and is also frequently misspelled as "Tanauchi" or "Tarauchi." At some point, there had even been a suggestion that the name was an umbrella for a group of artists or a studio. There is, however, some evidence that Fukutaro was an individual artist with the existence of exhibition and gallery labels; among them, the inclusion of two of his woodcuts in a catalogue of artworks shown at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (Kyoto Hanga-In Catalogue 8, p. 27).