Now 53, his house in Tōkyō was visited by artists, poets, and statesmen. He continued to travel, collecting old coins, magatama, unusually shaped rocks, and the like, which he catalogued and exhibited. He also engaged in the appraisal of artworks and dealing. He followed up his lifelong interest in Sugawara no Michizane, as man, Tenjin, as kami, dedicating a series of oversized bronze mirrors, in diameter and weighing , to Tenmangū shrines founded in his honour, first Kitano Tenmangū (with a map of Hokkaidō, Karafuto, and Chishima on the mirror's reverse), later Ōsaka Tenmangū and Dazaifu Tenmangū, as well as at Ueno Tōshō-gū and Kimpusen-ji, and also smaller mirrors at twenty further shrines to Tenjin. In 1881, he commissioned a painting from Kawanabe Kyōsai entitled Hokkai Dōjin Taking a Nap Under the Trees, a reworking of the traditional nirvāṇa painting (or nehanzu) that, completed five years later, shows a snoozing Matsuura Takeshirō surrounded by objects from his collection, in place of the usual mourners. At the end of his seventh decade, he climbed Mount Ōdaigahara three times, maintaining the mountain trails and rest huts, as well as Mount Fuji. In Meiji 21 (1888), struck down by meningitis, and elevated once more to Fifth Court Rank, he died of a cerebral haemorrhage. His funeral expenses covered by the Emperor, he was initially laid to rest in Asakusa, his remains subsequently transferred and divided, in accordance with his last will and testament (entitled One Thousand Tortoises, Ten Thousand Cranes), between the in Tōkyō and his beloved Mount Ōdaigahara.