Picture Bride

In “Picture Bride,” many features of the lives picture brides led were depicted. At the start of the film, a young Japanese woman named Riyo, whose aunt set her up to be a picture bride, is sent from Japan to Hawaii to meet her new husband, Matsuji. This is reflected in Takaki, on page 47: “The picture bride system … was based on the established custom of arranged marriage.” These types of marriages were relatively common in the early 1900s, and fulfilled the dream of having a wife for many male workers on the Hawaiian plantations. Furthermore, the film showed that the photograph Riyo received of Matsuji did not match the man she met when she reached Hawaii – Matsuji admitted that he had sent her an old photograph of himself, one which was taken when he was much younger. It was not unusual for picture brides to be met with this type of surprise, because men seeking picture brides would not unfrequently send old photographs of themselves to their bride-to-be. Seeing the picture, the future brides would be under the impression that they would be marrying a young man, when this usually did not turn out to be the case.

 “Picture Bride” also illustrates many aspects of Japanese American culture that differ from Chinese American culture. For instance, the very fact that women were working on the plantations in Hawaii alongside men is completely different from the roles Chinese American women played in America in the same time period (Presentation 1/10/17). Contrary to Japanese American women, Chinese American women were permitted to come to America in very small numbers, and the jobs they were allowed to hold were very minimal, if they were allowed to have jobs at all. This is supported in Takaki on page 47: “Thousands of young women were engaged in the migration of labor … within Japan and employed in industries away from home.” This is one of the most distinguishable differences between Chinese- and Japanese-American cultures in “Picture Bride.”