Picture Bride

In the movie Picture Bride a young Japanese girl named Riyo is brought to Hawaii as a picture bride to marry what she assumes is a young man, but turns out to be a 43 year old man named Matsuji. The two get married and Riyo struggles to assimilate to her new home and surroundings. On page 47 of Takaki's book, "Strangers from a Different Shore", he describes "the picture-bride system, or shashin kekkon" which is "based on the established custom of arranged marriage, omiaikekkon" (Takaki 47). Often in Asian cultures, the parents would hire a matchmaker and they would pair their child with another partner. As stated in the book, when the possible partners were great distances apart (ex: one in Japan, the other in Hawaii) they would send each other photographs before meeting. This idea became a major way for migrants living in the United States to gain a wife and thus a companion and eventually a family. Takaki's story also mentions a woman named Riyo Orite, who was a picture bride to a man in America, and might be the bride the movie is based on.

The Japanese-American presentation from January 10th explained that many Japanese-American incomes came from plantation work. As seen in the movie, Riyo and her husband, along with a small handful of other Japanese laborers, were working on a plantation in Hawaii. They worked numerous hours, almost every day each week, and earned only a small amount of money, but it was their only source of income. There was a scene about halfway through the movie that showed all of the workers receiving their payment for work and Riyo was shocked to find out she only earned $11 for a month of work ($0.65 per day). Not only was income lower for people of color compared to white men, but it was even lower for women; one of the main reasons Japanese women were brought to the US was for even cheaper labor.

Going back to the idea of arranged marriages, another movie that showed nearly the same theme was Eat a Bowl of Tea. In Eat a Bowl of Tea, a young Chinese-American son named Ben Loy was sent by his father back to China to meet his "picture bride". Upon arrival, he is introduced to Mei Oi, his picture bride. Both Ben's matchmaker and Mei Oi's compared information (ex: horoscopes/zodiac signs) and made sure the two young adults were suitable for marriage, and the marriage was officially arranged and the two got married. As I said above, it was a very common occurrence and tradition in Asian countries for the parents to arrange a marriage for their child; they wanted to make sure that whoever their child married was a respectable individual who would not bring shame upon their family.