“Picture Bride” elucidated the journey that many Japanese women made to America, especially after the Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1908. Takaki claims that after the Gentlemen’s Agreement, there was “a shift in the purpose of Japanese immigrants from the dekasegi (sojourning) to the teiju (settling) stage. Riyo’s journey in the film demonstrates this transition. When she arrives to Hawaii in 1918, she is shocked at her husband’s age, does not want to sleep with him, and wants to run away. She asks Kana to teach her how to do laundry and then tells her husband that she is sorry for the trouble she caused and will work hard to pay him back for bringing her over and then return to Japan. However, as she learns that the Japanese Americans living in Hawaii have a unique story to tell, her own identity becomes tied to their story. When Riyo goes to the ocean, she talks to Kana’s ghost who tells her to take care of the girls and gives Riyo her number necklace, just as an older women had previously done to Kana. Then when she returns home, her husband tells her that the house was empty when she left. She realizes that there is no one waiting for her in Japan, but there are people that want and need her in Hawaii. Since her identity is tied to a new community in Hawaii, it becomes her new home; the film concludes with Riyo hearing her daughter singing her own daughter to sleep. Originally a sojourner, Riyo embodies the transition that many Japanese made to call America home. Changing one’s home is not a comfortable or easy process, and Riyo shows how change and assimilation is difficult and takes time.

Comparing “Picture Bride” and “Eat a Cup of Tea” also evinces how both the immigrants and the types of communities they were coming to were different for the Chinese and Japanese. Both Riyo and Mei Oi have troubling transitioning; however, Mei Oi came to a bachelor community and found herself “in a world of men” (Takaki 121). From the beginning, Japanese emigration was more family-focused, regulated by the strong central government that stemmed from the Meiji Restoration (Takaki 46). The Japanese government desired to maintain their national honor and avoid the contempt that had been brought upon the Chinese: “The Japanese migrants were a select group…[and] the Japanese government promoted the emigration of women” (Takaki 46). However, after racism persisted, the U.S. and Japan made the informal Gentlemen’s Agreement (Presentation 1/10). Nonetheless, the agreement still allowed to wives to join their husbands and so families continued to arrange marriages, only overseas. The beginning of “Picture Bride” told that 20,000 picture brides from such marriages came to the U.S. between 1907-1924. Therefore, while Mei Oi was greeted by a banquet of men, Riyo was met with families. More Japanese women immigrated because it was encouraged by Japanese ideology and proletarianization. Unlike in China, Japanese women were becoming wage-earning workers (Takaki 47). This is shown in the film through Riyo’s knowledge of English—in Japan she worked in a café with many English-speakers. Also, the Hawaiian government “actively promoted [women’s] immigration” because the women were used as cheap labor and would keep men on the plantations, motivating them to work harder. Overall, more Japanese women than Chinese women immigrated to the U.S. and they came to families. “Picture Bride” captures the struggle of assimilation and the time it takes to find one’s identity in a new community through Riyo’s story and the sugar plantation community dynamics.