Motives of husbands
In the late 19th century, Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean men traveled to Hawaii as cheap labor to work on theMotives of picture brides
There were many factors that influenced women to become picture brides. Some came from poor families, so they became picture brides for economic reasons. 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.Fan (1996). p. 75. 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. Others did it out of obligation to their families. Because the marriages were often facilitated by parents, the daughters felt they could not go against their parents' wishes. One former picture bride recounted her decision: "I had but remote ties with him yet because of the talks between our close parents and my parents' approval and encouragement, I decided upon our picture-bride marriage." There is, however, little to no indication that the brides were sold to their husbands by their families. Some women became picture brides in an attempt to escape familial duties. They thought that by leaving Japan or Korea they could get out of responsibilities such as filial piety that came along with traditional marriage. Some women thought that they would gain freedoms denied to them in Japan and Korea. A quote from a Korean picture bride named Mrs. K embodies the mindset of many picture brides traveling to Hawaii, "Hawaii's a free place, everybody living well. Hawaii had freedom, so if you like talk, you can talk, if you like work, you can work." With the influx of women becoming picture brides, some women followed the trend as the thing to do. As one Japanese picture bride, Motome Yoshimura, explained, "I wanted to come to the United States because everyone else was coming. So I joined the crowd."KVIE Public Television (2010).Marriage process
These Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean women got the name picture brides because the men in Hawaii and mainland United States sent pictures back to their home countries in order to find a bride. 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.Chai (1988). p. 51. When looking at prospective brides the go-betweens looked at the family background, health, ages and wealth of the women.Niiya (2001). p. 334. The process of picture bride marriage was modeled after traditionalImmigration
The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 stopped the issuance of passports to Japanese laborers trying to go to continental America or Hawaii. However, there was a loophole in the agreement that allowed wives and children to immigrate to be with their husbands and fathers. It was because of this loophole that so many picture brides were able to immigrate to the United States. The impact of the Gentlemen's Agreement is evident in the population percentage of men and women before and after it was issued. For example, 86.7 percent of Japanese admitted to U.S. prior to Gentlemen's Agreement were men, though after the agreement only 41.6 percent of the Japanese admitted were men. By 1897, the Japanese were known as the largest single ethnic group in Hawaii, consisting of 40 percent of the population by the year 1900. Between 1907 and 1923 14,276 Japanese picture brides and 951 Korean picture brides arrived in Hawaii. Likewise, Korean immigration to Hawaii was halted by Japan after Korea's new status as a Japanese protectorate in 1905. Picture brides, however, were an exception. 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. In 1910, Korean men outnumbered women ten to one within the United States. ByArrival
It was a rough journey for the picture brides. When they first arrived, they were required to go through numerous inspections at the immigration station. The United States government did not recognize picture marriages as being legal; therefore, the picture brides would meet their soon-to-be husbands for the first time and attend a mass wedding ceremony on the docks. Many of these women were surprised at what they found upon arrival. Most of what the women knew about their husbands before meeting them was based on the photos they had sent. However, the images presented did not always represent the men's real lives. Men would send photos back to Japan and Korea that were retouched, old, or of different men completely.Niiya (2001). p. 335. Men often wore borrowed suits and chose to pose with luxury items, such as cars and houses, that they did not actually own. One picture bride summarizes the feelings of many of the brides subsequent to meeting their husbands; she writes, "I came to Hawaii and was so surprised and very disappointed, because my husband sent his twenty-five-year-old handsome-looking picture...He came to the pier, but I see he's really old, old-looking. He was forty-five years more old than I am. My heart stuck." On average, the grooms were ten to fifteen years older than their brides. The age of their husbands were not the only shock for the women, they were also taken aback by their living conditions. 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. 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.Life in Hawaii
Though they were now living in Hawaii, the Japanese picture brides still felt it was important to preserve their traditions and heritage. The values they tried to instill in their children were filial piety, obligation to community and authority (''on'' in the Japanese language), reciprocal obligation (''giri'' in Japanese), the importance of hard work, perseverance, frugality, and a drive for success (''seiko'' in Japanese). Many picture brides worked on the plantations. In 1920 fourteen percent of the workers on the plantations were female, and of those female workers, eighty percent were Japanese.Takaki (1983). p. 78. On the plantation they usually irrigated and weeded the fields, stripped cane of dry leaves, or cut seed cane. Men were given similar tasks, but were often paid more. For example, in 1915 Japanese women plantation workers made 55 cents compared to the 78 cents made by their male counterparts. 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. When a woman could not afford childcare she might work with her child on her back.Bill (n.d.). para. 5. Some picture bride women with children left the fields to work for bachelor men by doing laundry, cooking, or providing clothing. Korean picture brides left plantation life sooner than many Japanese women did, and many moved to Honolulu to start their own businesses.Chai (1988). p. 56. Regardless of whether they stayed on the plantation or not, it was important to the picture brides to build communities between themselves through women's groups and churches.Problems with the practice
Though initially unhappy, most of the picture brides eventually settled into their marriages or just accepted them so they did not shame their families.Yasutake (2004). p. 119. Japanese couples were often from similar areas of Japan and therefore had fewer marital issues than Korean couples who were often from different areas of Korea. Though, there were exceptions to this, and not every marriage worked out. Some of the picture brides, after seeing their husbands for the first time, rejected them and went back to Japan or Korea. The bonds of these marriages were tenuous enough that bride Lee Young Oak and her husband Chung Bong Woon were met with praise and relief by their fellow Koreans in Hawaii for the relative success and happiness of their marriage while on their honeymoon in Honolulu. 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.Fan (1996). p. 76. An example of a picture bride who stayed married to her husband, despite his mistreatment of her, was Shizuko Tamaki; she and her husband were married for 50 years. Others who initially married did not end up staying with their husbands. These picture brides resorted to elopement with another man, or ''kakeochi'' in Japanese.Niiya (2001). p. 234. Elopement was especially hazardous to the picture brides because of its endangerment of their reputation and their residency in the United States. Wives who eloped could be deported to Japan, following the Japanese civil code that granted the husbands the ability to decide the new residency of their wife; for those women, the Women's Home Missionary Society in the United States provided temporary housing while they waited to go back to Japan.Lee (2003). p. 36. In order to find their wives who had disappeared, the husbands of these women would take out reward ads in Issei community newspapers for whomever could find their wife. 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. The people who were so against the immigration of the Japanese and picture brides were called exclusionists. They called picture bride marriage uncivilized because it did not involve love or have any regard to morality; exclusionists thought of picture bride marriage as a violation of the Gentlemen's Agreement, since they believed the women were more like workers rather than wives to the men. 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. Also, some people, many immigrant inspectors included, thought that picture bride marriage was a disguise for aEnd of the practice
In order to maintain positive relations with the United States, the Japanese government stopped issuing passports to picture brides on March 1, 1920, because they were so ill-received in the United States. The end of picture brides left around 24,000 bachelors with no way to return to Japan and bring back a wife. Despite this, picture brides and the gentlemen's agreement were able to create a second Japanese generation, Nisei, consisting of 30,000 people in 1920.In popular culture
Yoshiko Uchida'sSee also
* List of China-related topics *References
Citations
Bibliography
*Bill, T. (n.d.). Field work and family work picture brides on Hawai'i's sugar plantations, 1910 - 1920. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20160304044947/http://www.asianamericanmedia.org/picturebride/idx_field.html *Chai, A. Y. (1979). "Mrs. K.": Oral history of a Korean picture bride. Women's Studies Newsletter, 7(4), 10–13. Retrieved from JSTOR. *Chai, A. Y. (1988). Women's history in public: "picture brides" of Hawaii. Women's Studies Quarterly, 16(1/2), 51–62. Retrieved from JSTOR. *Chang, Edward T. (2019). Korean Americans: A Concise History. Riverside, CA: The Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at the University of California Riverside. p. 7. . Print. *Choi, Anne Soon. Korean Americans. New York: Chelsea House, 2007. Print. *Fan, C. (1996). Asian women in Hawai'i: migration, family, work, and identity. NWSA Journal, 8(1), 70–84. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database. *KVIE Public Television (Producer). (2010, June 5). Central valley's Japanese – picture bride phenomena ideo file *Lee, C. (2003). Prostitutes and picture brides: Chinese and Japanese immigration, settlement, and American nation-building, 1870–1920. The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, 70. *Macmillan, Michael E. (November 1985). Unwanted Allies: Koreans as Enemy Aliens in World War II. Hawaiian Journal of History, 19, 179-203. Hawaiian Historical Society. *Niiya, B. (Ed.). (2001). Encyclopedia of Japanese American history updated edition: An a-z reference from 1868 to the present. New York: Japanese American National Museum. *Ogawa, D, & Grant, G. (n.d.). The Japanese in Hawai'i: 1885–1920. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20101121123150/http://www.asianamericanmedia.org/picturebride/idx_japan.html *Shin, Linda. (April 1975.) "Koreans in America, 1903-1945. Amerasia Journal, 3(1), 32-39. UCLA Asian American Studies Center. *Takaki, R. (1983). Pau hana: Plantation life and labor in Hawaii 1835–1920. University of Hawaii Press. *Tanaka, K. (2004). Japanese picture marriage and the image of immigrant women in early twentieth-century California. The Japanese Journal of American Studies, 15, 115–138. *Yang, E.S. (1984). Korean Women of America: From Subordination to Partnership, 1903-1930. Amerasia Journal, 11(2), 1-28. UCLA Asian American Studies Center. *Yasutake, R., (2004). Transnational women's activism: the United States, Japan, and Japanese immigrant communities in California, 1859–1920. New York University Press.External links