Many of Japan's traditional ways were destroyed following the country's defeat in the Second World War. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 led to the Japanese Government instituting a system designed to protect what it considered to be the National Treasures of Japan and individual artist-craftsmen – popularly known as "national treasures" ("ningen kokuhō", – who were deemed to be holders of important cultural skills ("jūyō mukei bunkazai", [重要無形文化財). The spread of Yanagi's ideas was helped by these developments so that, by about 1960，the concept of "mingei" had become known not just to a small group of people living in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, but — as a result of publicity by the media — to almost everyone in Japan.