The Gutai group developed a new perspective on individuality and community, which were ideas pertinent to the post war atmosphere. The group developed a "collective spirit of individuality" by emphasizing the importance of the individual in a group context. To the Gutai group, community was essential in fostering the creativity of the individual. In terms of the post war atmosphere, it was common in Japan to believe that community was to blame for enabling such war aggression to happen and therefore it needed to be abolished. This is what inspired Yoshihara to rethink community. The group took on a horizontal system of community as opposed to a hierarchical one. Gutai believed that community was essential to the development of the individual. Gutai viewed individualism as challenging oneself against external forces, such as the psychological forces of fascism, in which the individual becomes a means of asserting freedom. Asserting freedom is how one can prevent totalitarianism from returning. These views were written in articles and shared in the Gutai bulletin. Artistically speaking, the Gutai group maintained their collective identity by having group exhibitions and group journals. The importance of the individual comes into play in the diversity of the artists themselves. The styles and approaches greatly varied with in the group. They also had many existential reflections like Jean Fautrier and Jackson Pollock. Their principles of emancipation were from the rapid dehumanizing industrial growth that was happening in Japan. Their concerns were close to that of Allan Kaprow, the Situationist International, the Dutch group Nul, and the Brazilian Neo-concretists The group worked together for 18 years and dissolved after the sudden death of Yoshihara in March 1972.