While in Europe, Okamoto spent time in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Paris, where he rented a studio in Montparnasse and enrolled in a lycée in Choisy-le-Roi.

[1] In 1938, Okamoto, along with many other Parisian artists at the time, began studying ethnography under Marcel Mauss, and he would later apply this ethnographic lens to his analysis Japanese culture.

He was inspired by Pablo Picasso’s Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit (1931) which he saw at the Paul Rosenberg Gallery, and in 1932 he began successfully submitting his own paintings for exhibition at the Salon des surindépendants, for which he received some positive reviews.

[4] He participated in the French intellectual discussion group Collège de Sociologie and joined the secret society founded by Georges Bataille, Acéphale.

[7] In 1948, he and the art critic Kiyoteru Hanada established the group Yoru no Kai ("Night Society"), whose members attempted to theorize artistic expression after the war.

Hanada and Okamoto then founded the Abangyarudo Kenkyūkai ("Avant-Garde Research Group") which mentored younger artists and critics such as Tatsuo Ikeda, Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, and Yūsuke Nakahara.

[20] The distinct appearance of Tower of the Sun was influenced by Okamoto’s background in European Surrealism, interest in Mexican art, and Jōmon ceramics.

Although very few of Okamoto’s prewar paintings remain, during his early career in Paris he was interested in abstraction and showed a number of works with the Abstraction-Création group.

The completion of Itamashiki ude (“Wounded Arm”), which melded abstraction and representation, convinced Okamoto that he should leave the Abstraction-Création group and explore other modes of painting.

[24] Okamoto's postwar paintings, like his murals and public sculpture, continued to be informed by abstraction and Surrealism, but were also influenced by his theory of polarism, and by his discovery of prehistoric arts.

The Law of the Jungle (1950), one of his most famous paintings, depicts a monstrous red fish-like creature with an enormous, zipper-shaped spine devouring a human figure.

[25] Small human and animal forms in vibrant primary colors surround the central creature, floating through the glowing green jungle setting.

Many of the key features of this work – the mix of abstraction and surreal anthropomorphic forms, vibrant colors, and a flat picture plane – continued in his paintings for the rest of his career.

[26] The mural's subtitle is “Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” and accordingly the painting illustrates a landscape of nuclear destruction where a skeleton burns in red and emits pointed white protrusions.

He questioned dialectics and refused the notion of synthesis, believing rather that thesis and antithesis (polar opposites) could actually remain apart, resulting in permanent fragmentation rather than unity or resolution.

[30] This theory, proposed shortly after World War II, was in many ways an aesthetics that directly opposed the visual totality and harmony of Japanese wartime painting.

The Law of the Jungle (1950), however, is permanently fragmented: individual elements are clearly described in line and color, but resist any identification, and float in the painted space without any connection to one another.

[33] The theory was first introduced in his seminal essay “Jōmon doki ron: Shijigen to no taiwa” (“On Jomon ceramics: Dialogue with the fourth dimension”), published in Mizue magazine in 1952.

Inspired by a trip to Tokyo National Museum, where he viewed earthenware ceramic vessels and dogū from the prehistoric Jōmon period, the article argued for a complete rethinking of Japanese aesthetics.

[35][36] By contrast, the energetic, rough, and mysterious patterns and designs of Jōmon ceramics offered a dynamic, authentic expression that was missing from contemporary Japan.

He argued that Japanese artists should pursue the same dynamic power and mystery to fuel their own work, drawing inspiration from this more “primitive” culture of their ancestors.

The work conveys Okamoto's strong message that people can overcome even the cruelest tragedy with pride, and that "The Myth of Tomorrow" will be born in its wake.

Both museums organize special exhibitions addressing key themes in Okamoto's oeuvre, such as Jōmon artifacts, Okinawa, and public artworks.