With post-occupation Japan's emphasis on freedom, the United States' goal was as well to promote abstract art in order to promote democracy. Like the social reforms of the Allies occupation of Japan after the war, the United States wanted to steer Japan, and other axis nations, away from the more communistic art style of socialist realism. This helped spread Gutai art since it sponsored its creation. One example is the Guggenheim International Award exhibition that begun after the war and tactfully included work from Japan, a former axis state, in order to invite non-western art into the purview of contemporary abstract art as it cooperated with the democratic propaganda.