Images seared into the back of his mind at this time would become major motifs in his art works: roaring American bombers, searchlights scanning the skies, firebombs dropped from planes, the city a sea of fire, fleeing masses, and his father's deformed goldfish swimming in its tank, flashes from the bombs reflecting in the water.

"I was rushed away from my childhood, a time that should be filled with eating and playing, by the enigmatic monstrosity of war; my dreams were a vortex of fear and anxiety, anger and resignation.

After Hara's sudden death, however, he turned to the pioneering field within manga of graphic novels, and went on to study to become a professional artist at Musashino Art University.

During the '60s he busied himself as a successful illustrator and graphic designer while also actively participating in the Neo-Dada organization, one of the defining art movements of postwar Japan.

"Warhol was in the process of shifting from commercial illustrator to artist, and I both witnessed and experienced firsthand his tactics, his method of incision into the art world.

At the height of psychedelic culture and pop art, Tanaami's kitschy, colorful illustrations and design work received high acclaim in both Japan and abroad.

Furthermore, his series of erotic paintings featuring Hollywood actresses done in the early '70s became an important body of work that declared Tanaami as the Japanese artist with a witty eye on American culture.

The vanguard nature of his work led the police to shut down his 1976 exhibit Super Orange of Love at Nishimura Gallery for inspection on the opening day.

Similarly, the cranes, elephants and naked women that appear along with spirals and miniature garden-like architectural forms are characteristic of his works from this period.

In these works, he continues to manifest images from his personal memories and from his dream world—personified goldfish, deformed characters, rays of light, helical pine trees, fantastical architecture, young girls—through the various mediums of painting, sculpture, film and furniture.