Picture Bride

The film Picture Bride follows Riyo on her journey to America to meet her husband, a man she has only seen in pictures. When Riyo arrives in Hawaii she discovers the man is far older than the man in the picture, this is because he claims that he "didn't have a recent picture of himself". Disappointed Riyo wants to return home to Japan despite the fact that she has no remaining family there. However Riyo comes to learn that as a Japanese woman in America it will be very difficult for her to raise the $300 needed to return back to Japan.

The feeling of deception that Riyo feels upon meeting her husband is how many Japanese picture brides felt when meeting their husbands for the first time. As noted in Takaki " the women found their new homes were often crude 'huts' with oil lamps for light, boards nailed together with legs for tables,  and straw-filled canvases for beds." (190). Many of the women were not in the living situations that they thought they would be coming to when arriving in the magical land of America. In the film Riyo was lucky, while the house was not ideal her husband did mention that they at least  had their own place, indicating that this was not how everyone lived.

Despite Riyo's initial disappointment to her situation, she eventually came to living in Hawaii and it became her home. At the beginning of the film Riyo continued to talk about how she needed to return home, but by the end of the film the ocean carried her home to Hawaii, she had come full circle.

One of the main differences that can be seen between the Chinese family setting and the Japanese family setting it that women hold more value in this society. The Japanese government wanted their women to travel to America to help with the Japanese reputation where as not many Chinese women were going to America.