In postwar Japan, a shortage of domestic goods meant the country was flooded with commodities from foreign countries. Toshiko Okanoue used fragments from Western magazines such as Life, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue to create radical compositions combining body parts, animals, and inanimate objects in dynamic arrangements. Although the component parts of her collages originated from Western sources, Okanoue regarded her technique of image making as deeply rooted in Japanese tradition. She thought of her works as a form of hari-e, a traditional Japanese technique of making pictures by pasting small pieces of colored paper onto board.