Chōgorō began writing fiction while teaching at a junior high school, at first in his native Kagoshima, and later in Kyoto.

Kaionji moved to Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture from Kyoto in 1934, when he made a resolution to pursue a career as a professional writer.

He won the prestigious Naoki Prize in 1936 with Tensho Onna Gassen (Tenshō Women's Battle), about the life of the tea master Sen no Rikyū and his daughter Ogin.

Life in the army did not agree with him, and he returned to Japan in 1942 on medical leave, which he managed to stretch out for the next three years until the end of the war.

He considered his life's work to be a biography of Saigō Takamori, which he failed to complete due to his death by a cerebral hemorrhage in 1977.