In 1945 much of urban Japan lay in ruins and the land was for the first time in history occupied by foreign powers. To many Japanese it seemed that everything had been lost, but in fact the nation was quickly to demonstrate its ability to recover - the years between between the 1945 and 1952 became a period of steady progress and considerable achievement in the visual arts. This catalogue examines how one school of printmakers, under the leadership of Onchi Koshiro, found themselves among those calling for a new search for the nation's heart in its aesthetic traditions.