The most comprehensive study in English to date on the postwar Japanese movement Mono-ha (School of Things) and examines the group's practice in Tokyo between 1968-1972 at the height of the nation's political upheaval against the US-Japan Security Treaty, anti-Vietnam War protests and the oil crisis. The Mono-ha artists - who included Nobuo Sekine, Lee Ufan, Kishio Suga and Susumu Koshimizu - all distinguished themselves through an aesthetic detachment and renewal of matter in response to the immanent loss of the object as a sun in Japanese postwar art practice.