[3][4] Since he was associated with Surrealism's progressive ideas, Fukuzawa's art became a contentious issue for the Japanese State that led to his subsequent imprisonment and forced him to pursue pro-Imperial subjects during the Second World War.

Fukuzawa's career was not limited to the Japanese islands as he traveled extensively across mainland Asia, Europe, the United States, and Australia where his exposure to key socio-political events and artistic styles influenced his later periods of creativity.

[7] Paris was the nexus from which Fukuzawa found inspiration in European Surrealism, mainly through Max Ernst's collage series La Femme 100 Tetes (1929) and the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico.

[10] As haiku seeks to convey in short form descriptions of larger images, Fukuzawa likewise intended to express and extend through the confines of a finite painted canvas the magnitude of Surrealist thought.

In an attempt to avoid punishment, Fukuzawa altered the Surrealist characteristics of his works in a less overt manner that presented the illusion of a more favorable view of the Japanese State.

He found inspiration in the vastness of the area's landscape, and he incorporated subtle criticisms pertaining to Japan's control of Manchukuo within romanticized scenes visually acceptable by the government for public arts consumption.

Oxen (1936) is one of the large-scale oil paintings Fukuzawa utilized to address the contradictions between Japan's idealization of "Manchuria" versus the social realities of poor Chinese and Korean peasants who resided under colonial rule.

Scholars speculate the artificiality of the oxen was meant to evoke the weakness surrounding Japanese propagandistic idealization of "Manchuria" as a colony in which all races lived harmoniously.

The painting was not perceived as social criticism because the dominance of the landscape seemingly appeared to align with Japanese propaganda that marketed the region as an exotic, utopian paradise settlement.

[18] On April 5, 1941, Fukuzawa and art critic Shuzo Takiguchi were arrested and imprisoned by the Special Higher Police because the government viewed Surrealism as Communist propaganda.

[19] The incident occurred after authorities deemed Fukuzawa's art had violated the Peace Preservation Law (1925), a national policy designed to suppress political demonstrations or creative expression that espoused anti-imperial and pro-Western beliefs.

Dante Alighieri's 14th Century narrative poem The Divine Comedy contributed to this change as Fukuzawa incorporated violently disfigured bodies caught amid chaos, bloodshed, and misery.

The entanglement of the bodies’ limbs obscure their faces, and the composition's solemn and melancholic mood conveys Fukuzawa's acknowledgement of the devastating effects of war on human life.

On a quest for renewed artistic inspiration, Fukuzawa traveled extensively throughout Europe, the United States, Mexico, Latin America, Australia, and mainland Asia.

The artists who profoundly impacted Fukuzawa's paintings include: Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Abraham Rattner, Jackson Pollock, and Rico Lebrun.

The disappearance of the paintings in question were purchased by James V. Coleman and featured in the exhibition Fifteen Artists in Postwar Japan at the Tribune Subway Gallery from May 1 - June 5, 1947.