In 1913, she became a student of the famous writer
Morita Sohei. With his assistance, her article
Katase made (“To Katase”) appeared in the literary journal
Shinseiki in September 1913. However, her affairs with Morita Sohei did not go well, and her personal life was further complicated by her strained relations with her husband. In 1914, she attempted suicide at the temple of Nanko-in, in
Chigasaki. In 1916, she met another man named Morita, this time
Keio University student Morita Shichiro. She divorced her husband and married him, and decided to stop writing. In 1923, after the
Great Kantō earthquake, she moved to
Osaka with her husband, son and daughter. They moved back to Tokyo briefly in 1925 to start a bookstore, but when it went bankrupt, they returned to Osaka. In 1932, her former mentor Morita Sohei visited Osaka, and she wrote
Kimono Ko-shoku in one day. This story appeared in
Chūōkōron (Central Review), and marked her return to the literary world. She moved back to Tokyo in 1933, living first in
Shibuya, then in Ushigome. In 1939, under the sponsorship of
Chūōkōron, she traveled to
Shanghai,
Nanjing, and
Hankou in Japanese-occupied
China to interview troops from the
Imperial Japanese Army and
Navy. In 1941, she returned to Hokkaidō to accept a teaching post at
Sapporo University, which had the added advantage of safety in its distance from wartime Tokyo. In March 1943, the Imperial Japanese Navy asked that she make a visit to Japanese occupied
Southeast Asia, however, she cut the tour short and returned to Japan in November. She confided to her Navy mentor about her strong desire to see that the war came to a speedy end, and her worries about her son, who had just received his
conscription notice. In 1944, she moved to
Kamakura in
Kanagawa prefecture, but her house burned down in a strong windstorm in December 1946. She found another house, and continued to live in Kamakura until 1952, when she moved to
Aoyama in Tokyo. In 1954, she was selected as the Japanese delegate to the
International PEN meeting in
Amsterdam. After her return, she became involved in politics, and joined the
Liberal Democratic Party, winning a seat in the
House of Councillors of the
Japanese Diet in 1962. She concentrated on educational issues, especially pertaining to the
Japanese language. ==Later life and death==