Kanda Nissho learned how to work with oil paints from his older brother when he was in junior high school, and only started painting seriously around 1956, at the age of 18. Nissho belonged to a farming family, so he had to teach himself to paint on the side while working on the family farm. In October 1956, he entered a public entry exhibition in the city of Obihiro for the first time, and even won a prize! His well-deserving winning work was A Lean Horse, which depicted a pitifully thin plow horse. Around this time, he also painted Self-portrait, which shows him as a young adult, and the painting Landscape that shows two farmers harvesting under a blue sky. He already shows here the distinctive technique for which he later became known—carving into the paint with a painting knife.