However, he is known to have been writing as early as 1914, when he published an essay on landscape painting for the Akita Sakigake Shimpō.
During the Second World War, Munetane and Moritane evacuated to Akita in order to escape the American firebombing of Tokyo.
[2] In the period of secularization and Americanization enforced by SCAP after the surrender of Japan, the Hirata family's legacy of nativism made them into objects of public derision.
As a result, Munetane withdrew from public life and very little is known of his activities in the immediate post-war years.
The plot where the original shrine stood became part of the Tokyo Metro's Koishikawa Depot [ja], and so reconstruction was done at a new site.