"In his Hagiwara series he seeks to rediscover his ancestry as a Japanese American that was negated when he and his family were interned. Hagiwara, a mountain in Japan covered by forests of bamboo and terraced rice fields, has been the Okuharas' ancestral home for more than 800 years. Through Tetsu Okuhara's travels to Japan the Hagiwara work has taken on an alter like quality honoring family elders. The connection between past and present, East and West, land and family, in Okuhara's work creates a journey through time that transcends the artist's personal experience and becomes universal in its scope."--auction catalog, p. 192.