Gutai is a follower of the American Abstract Expressionism and European Informel movements, and was interpreted as a branch of these arts.
In reality, although these art forms are similar in form, the ideas and origins of their creation are completely different, and grouping them as a single trend is a shallow interpretation that only scratches the surface. Abstract Expressionism is, in a sense, a development of Surrealism, which deeply explores the world of the unconscious, a world in which human beings create things they cannot control through the production of automatism and enter into their works, and which incorporates materiality while retaining a strong sense of narrative.
"Informel" has a strong constructivist orientation and a marked tendency to pursue how far he can go in his adventures in modeling and color, and can be seen as a movement in which various attempts were made to develop pure abstraction.
What about the Gutai? The idea of "not imitating others" was strongly rooted in the idea of creating something that had never been done before anyway, and was created freely in a world without rules.
If Abstract Expressionism is an art movement that is the inheritance and development of the previous generation's Surrealism, and is an artistic activity that advanced the construction of a new world by denying the previous generation, Gutai was neither, but rather a departure from the untamed wilderness of the previous generation, and was unparalleled in its originality.