Picture Bride

Picture Bride

Picture Bride, released in 1995 and directed by Kayo Hatta, tells the story of many women living in Japan who were chosen to be brides by Japanese farm laborers living in Hawaii. The choice of the bride was based on their pictures. In this movie, Riyo wanted to leave Japan because her parents were killed by tuberculosis. She had heard great things about the paradise in Hawaii, and she agreed to be a picture bride. Riyo’s new husband was Matsuji, and based on his picture he seemed to be young, maybe in his twenties. Riyo was disappointed to find out that he had given her an old photo, and he was actually forty-three years old; older than Riyo’s father. Riyo was also disappointed to see her home as a shack. She continually tried to refuse Matsuji as her husband, starting on her wedding day when she wouldn’t allow him to help her off of the wagon, and then when she bit his hand when he tried to consummate the wedding night. She decided to try saving money to return to her aunt in Japan. Since Riyo was a city girl, she was also homesick because the work on the sugar cane plantation was very difficult for her due to her frailness. Riyo became best friends with a Japanese picture bride named Kana, who was also saving up to return to Japan. To help Riyo make more money to save, Kana introduced Riyo to ‘the laundry business’, which involved washing the white folk’s laundry, and delivering it to them. Kana ended up dieing in a fire on the sugar cane plantation when she tried to save her small son. Riyo continued the laundry business, and the story ended with Riyo and Matsuji making love; symbolizing that they were finally husband and wife.

Key film techniques used in Picture Bride were setting, costume, makeup, camera angles, lighting, and sound effects. The setting of this film was the 1800s. To establish the time; the film had wagons instead of cars, and it displayed the cabin-like home of Riyo and Matsuji without electricity. Also, they had no running water, and had to carry their water. The best use of makeup was Riyo’s complexion. When she first arrived in Hawaii as a city girl, her skin was extremely pale, and by the middle of the film, she had a very sun-tanned complexion on her face from the grueling work on the sugar cane plantation.

Matsuji’s complexion was very dark; which proved all his hard outdoor labor. A key film technique was a...

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...rsh living and working conditions, which was shown in the movie when Riyo got paid for the first time.

Historically, the time of picture brides was from 1908 to 1924. The picture brides’ purposes were to take care of the home, children, and to work along side their husbands in the fields; which was also shown accurately in the film. Research shows that some plantations had camps that were temporary homes for immigrants, which was not shown in the movie. A part of research that is interesting and would have benefited the film is that pictures of men were taken by professional photographers who often used the same suit over and over, so the laborers would look more distinguished. This would be important because the film showed Riyo’s disappointment of having received an old photo, and would add to that falsehood of the men’s photo’s.

Works Cited

Bill, Teresa. “Field Work and Family Work: Picture Brides on Hawai’i’s Sugar Plantations, 1910-1920.” http://www.naatanet.org/picturebride/idx_field.html, 1995 [accessed February 8, 2003].

Ogawa, Dennis. “The Japanese in Hawaii: 1885-1920.” http://www.naatanet.org/picturebride/idx_japan.html, 1995 [accessed February 8, 2003].