Like all members of the imperial family, he was exonerated from criminal prosecutions before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East by Douglas MacArthur.

He and his elder brother were separated from their parents and entrusted to the care of a respected ex-naval officer, Count Sumiyoshi Kawamura and his wife.

On 26 May 1922, Emperor Taishō granted his second son the title Chichibu no miya and the authorization to start a new branch of the imperial family.

While in Great Britain King George V decorated Prince Chichibu with the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order.

He received a promotion to the rank of major and assigned to command the Thirty First Infantry Division stationed at Hirosaki, Aomori in August 1935.

Prince Chichibu was a vehement ultra-right-wing militarist who increasingly influenced Japanese military policy in the prewar era.

After the assassination of prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi in 1932, he had many violent arguments with his brother, Emperor Hirohito, about the suspension of the constitution and the implementation of direct imperial rule.

On 9 February 1939, Chichibu attended a lecture on bacteriological warfare, given by Shirō Ishii, in the War Ministry Grand Conference Hall in Tokyo.

[12] According to a version told in her memoirs by Princess Chichibu, according to which the prince retired from active duty after being diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in June 1940, spent most of World War II convalescing at his villa in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, on the eastern foot of Mount Fuji and never really recovering from his illness.

He was "converted" to rugby after the JRFU president, Shigeru Kayama, returned from a long sea voyage and was able to "market" the game to Prince Chichibu.