In the 1950s, he was a leading exponent of the "reportage" style of Japanese socialist realist art, and later became known for his Surrealist paintings.
That same year, he helped co-found the Avant-Garde Art Society (前衛美術会, Zen'ei Bijutsukai), along with Chozaburō Inoue, Iri Maruki, Tadashi Yoshii and others, and participated in its first exhibition.
In 1960, in conjunction with the massive Anpo Protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, Bitō established a new art collective to produce art in support of the protests, called the "Revolutionary Artists' Front" (革命的芸術家戦線結成, Kakumeiteki Geijutsuka Sensen).
After the failure of the Anpo protests to stop the treaty, and the Communist Party's failure to act as a proper vanguard of revolution, Bitō and many other artists turned away from the doctrines of the Communist Party in favor of taking their art practice in more individualistic directions.
[7] Beginning in the 1980s, Bitō's paintings began to receive greater recognition, and his works were the subject of a number of solo exhibitions in Tokyo.