[1] In 1938, he moved to Tokyo and began studying painting under the renowned Japanese Surrealist Ichirō Fukuzawa,[1] who introduced him to the work of Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, and Hieronymus Bosch.
[2] Although he survived the war, feelings of guilt and traumatic memories of his wartime experience, including participating in the torture and murder of a Chinese prisoner, helped shape his ferociously anti-war outlook that was reflected in his later art.
That following year, he helped co-found the Avant-Garde Art Society (前衛美術会, Zen'ei Bijutsukai), along with Yutaka Bitō, Chozaburō Inoue, Iri Maruki, Tadashi Yoshii and others, and participated in its first exhibition.
"[3] In 1952, bowing to Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin's demand that they start an immediate communist revolution, the JCP ordered young artists to go to Ogōchi, a farming village in the mountains west of Tokyo that was scheduled to be obliterated by a dam, and support the formation of "mountain village guerrilla squads" (sanson kōsakutai) by mobilizing farmers' discontent with the dam construction in order to foment a violent communist revolution.
[2] It was during this period that he painted his most famous work, "The Tale of Akebono Village," depicting a murdered tenant's rights activist lying facedown in a pool of blood and a grandmother who had hanged herself after being tricked into bankruptcy.
[2] Although he continued to paint hundreds of canvases, he deliberately avoided seeking out commercial success, perhaps out of a sense of guilt, and was only able to survive as a full-time artist thanks to his devoted wife's earnings as a beautician.