Picture Bride

The tradition in marriage between Chinese and Japanese cultures are similar in many ways such as they have to go through matchmakers and wear traditional clothes on wedding day, but they are also different in many ways. As shown in the film “Eat a Bowl of Tea” the process of becoming husband and wife in Chinese culture was much complicated than Japanese culture, the matchmaker had to go through Ben and Mei Oi horoscopes and their families in order for them to get married. In Japanese culture the process was much easier, in the film “Picture Bride”, Riyo’s marriage was arranged by a matchmaker and they married on the same day she arrived on Hawaii without going through any other requirements.

As Riyo was hoping for a better life in Hawaii she found herself very disappointed in her new life because her husband is much older than her and not as wealthy as she expected. Not only Riyo but for many other picture brides’ disappointment was their first impression, as Chiyo Hisayasu, a picture bride, describes her new home “It was a dilapidated hovel said to have been a hunter’s cabin. My husband shared the tiny house with a young boy and an older man. What an inappropriate life for a bride and groom” (Takaki 190). For Riyo, she was a city girl so it was hard for her to adapt to the new home because before coming to Hawaii she lived a different life than her husband. When Riyo first came to work the other female workers discriminated and made fun of her because she was a city girl in Japan. Too disappointed with her new life her desire of returning home was so strong that she becomes stronger and more independent. She befriends with other female workers and works in the sugar plantation, laundry for other workers and an American house to find money to go back to Japan. With the tragedy of her friend Kana, she is then found Hawaii to be her new home since this is where her husband and friend are living, but at the same time she still remembers her hometown in Japan, where she came from.