Takahashi Shōtei studying art, Shotei and Terazaki Kogyo founded the Japan Youth Painting Society in 1889. In 1907, as a successful artist, he was recruited by Shōzaburō Watanabe to contribute to the Shin Hanga ("New Prints") art movement in Japan. Watanabe helped to fulfill the Western demand for Ukiyoe woodblock prints which would be similar to familiar historical masters of that genre, including Hiroshige. In about 1921 Shotei added the artistic name of Hiroaki. In 1923 the Great Kanto earthquake (and subsequent fire) destroyed Watanabe's facilities; this included all Shin Hanga woodblocks. Thus, Shotei recreated prior designs destroyed in the Great Kanto
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1922) and "A Serpent's Lust" (1923) (based on the story of the same title by Ueda Akinari, which was, in part, the inspiration for Mizoguchi Kenji's 1953 masterpiece "Ugetsu monogatari"). Some have argued that Tanizaki's relation to cinema is important to understanding his overall career. Tanizaki's reputation began to take off in 1923, when he moved to Kyoto after the Great Kanto earthquake, which destroyed his house in Yokohama (at the time Tanizaki was on a bus in Hakone and thus escaped injury). The loss of Tokyo's historic buildings and neighborhoods in the quake triggered a change in his enthusiasms,