Seven years ago, artist Hisashi Otsuka came from Japan to Hawaii seeking opportunities for artistic freedom denied him by Japanese tradition. He brought not only his aesthetic sensitivity and talent but also new, exciting forms of Japanese art that appeal to Western minds and emotions and that unite elements of both cultures in ways that enhance each. Otsuka's newest contemporary art deco works are turning, or returning, to Oriental themes and exploring modern concerns. East Meets West and Harmony comment explicitly on the significance to the modern Oriental woman of the traditions and values of the past. They suggest that Hisashi Otsuka, having burst through his own aesthetic frontier and claimed his own artistic freedom in The Kiss and Allure, is now no longer threatened by the conventions of his past and his classical training. Now he can acknowledge them and, like Lady Mieko, celebrate their significance: the artist he is today could not exist without the values and traditions of his past. These new works seem to be Otsuka's attempt to forge a new artistic reality, one that insists on the value of the past even while it focuses more precisely on contemporary realities, one that applauds the freedom possible in the West even while it seeks more carefully to balance Western and Eastern themes and points of view.