Picture bride
In the late 19th century, Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean men traveled to Hawaii as cheap labor to work on the sugarcane plantations.
[2] Because now these men were put in situations with limited mobility, they had to make Hawaii or the mainland United States their home, and part of that was getting married.
[4] Also, the plantation owners hoped that wives would limit the amount of gambling and opium smoking the workers did, and act as a morale booster for the men.
They thought that they would come upon economic prosperity in Hawaii and the continental United States, and could send back money to their families in Japan and Korea.
[6] There is evidence suggesting that picture brides were not infrequently educated at the high school or college level and were thus more emboldened to seek out new opportunities abroad.
Family members, often with the help of a go-between (called a nakōdo (仲人) in Japanese and a jungmae jaeng-i in Korean), used these photos to try to find wives for men who sent them.
[20] While the ethnic Korean labor force could no longer enter the U.S. from Hawaii in 1907, by 1910 groups of picture brides from Korea had begun immigrating to the West Coast.
Many women expected to live in houses like ones in the photos the men sent them, but instead found plantation quarters that were crude, isolated, and racially segregated.
[29] One of the reasons that the grooms and go-betweens were not altogether truthful with the future brides was because they believed that the women would not come if they knew the reality of the man and his conditions.
[32] In addition to working in the fields the women also were expected to take care of the house, which included cooking, cleaning, sewing and raising the children.
[35] Some picture bride women with children left the fields to work for bachelor men by doing laundry, cooking, or providing clothing.
[35] Korean picture brides left plantation life sooner than many Japanese women did, and many moved to Honolulu to start their own businesses.
[39] Some married husbands turned out to be alcoholics, physically abusive, or tried to sell them into brothels, but many of these women nevertheless stayed in the marriage for the sake of the children.
[38] Many residents of the American continent and Hawaii thought that the Gentlemen's Agreement would end Japanese immigration to the United States, so when vast numbers of picture brides started arriving, it revitalized the Anti-Japanese Movement.
[5] Exclusionists also feared that children produced from picture bride marriages would be a dangerous addition to the population because they would be able to buy land for their parents in the future.
[40] Also, some people, many immigrant inspectors included, thought that picture bride marriage was a disguise for a prostitution trade.
[44] The end of picture brides left around 24,000 bachelors with no way to return to Japan and bring back a wife.
The feature film Picture Bride (1994; unrelated to Uchida's novel), created by the Hawaii-born director Kayo Hatta and starring Youki Kudoh in the title role, tells the story of Riyo, a Japanese woman whose photograph exchange with a plantation worker leads her to Hawaii.
Julie Otsuka's novel, The Buddha in the Attic (2011), describes the lives of picture brides brought from Japan to San Francisco about a century ago and what it means to be an American in uncertain times.
[48] The finale episode of the AMC TV series, The Terror: Infamy (2019), reveals that before dying and returning as a yūrei, Yūko was a picture bride, with tragic consequences.
In the 2023 children's book "Brave Mrs. Sato" written by Lori Matsukawa and illustrated by Tammy Yee, readers learn about a picture bride who emigrated from Japan to Hawaii and developed a friendship with a young girl and taught her about her Japanese heritage and experiences as a picture bride.
