Kataoka was born on October 13, 1859, in Tosa Province (present-day Kōchi Prefecture). He served as an official in the police department of Shiga Prefecture. In 1880, he was transferred to Tokyo, where he caught the attention of Itō Hirobumi and was recruited into the Home Ministry. However, in 1889, Kataoka was recruited away from a career to accept the post of vice president of Nippon Life Insurance Company, and subsequently served as president of the company from 1903 to 1919. He was also president of the Miyako Hotels chain from 1915, and served as a member of the board for the Kyōdō Bank and Kansai Railways.
Kataoka returned to political life as a member of the Lower House of the Diet of Japan in the 1892 General Election, and was subsequently re-elected eight times. A political ally of Katsura Tarō, he joined Katsura’s Rikken Dōshikai political party in 1913 and subsequently served as a senior official in the Kenseikai. As a politician, he was sympathetic to labor relations issues, advocating a government-run worker’s insurance plan and an easing of police restrictions on labor protests.[1]