The term bridal image refers to the practice of the early 20th century immigrant workers (especially Japan, Okinawa and Korea) in Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States and Canada who chose brides from their home country through a matchmaker, who pairing brides by simply using photos and family recommendations from possible candidates. This is a shortened form of the traditional marriage process, and is similar in some ways to the mail-order bride concept.
Video Picture bride
Motif suami
In the late 19th century, the Japanese, Okinawis, and Koreans traveled to Hawaii as cheap labor to work in sugarcane plantations. Some continue to work on the mainland. These people initially plan to leave plantation work and return home after a few years or a contract runs out. Between 1886 and 1924, 199,564 Japan entered Hawaii and 113,362 returned to Japan. However, many men do not make enough money to go home. Also, in 1907 the Gentlemen Treaty banned immigration from Hawaii to the United States for labor. Because now these people are in a situation with limited mobility, they must make Hawaii or the United States their home, and that part of it will marry. In Hawaii, plantation owners also want to see the workers get married. Although at first they preferred single men, when the contract work system was abolished, the owners thought that wives would make men more likely to settle and stay. In addition, plantation owners hope that wives will limit the number of gambling and smoking addictions by the workers, and act as moral drivers for men.
Maps Picture bride
Image bridal motif
There are many factors that affect women to become brides. Some come from poor families, so they become brides for economic reasons. They think that they will experience economic prosperity in Hawaii and the United States, and can send money back to their families in Japan and Korea. Others do so because of obligations to their families. Because marriages are often facilitated by parents, daughters feel that they can not oppose their parents' wishes. One of the bride and groom of the picture told her decision: "I have a long relationship with him because of the conversation between our close parents and the approval and encouragement of my parents, I decided on our wedding bride."
Some women become brides pictures in an attempt to escape from family duties. They think that by leaving Japan or Korea they can get out of responsibility like the devotion that comes along with traditional marriage. Some women think that they will get rejected freedom for them in Japan and Korea. A quote from a Korean bride named Ny. K embodies the mindset of many brides traveling to Hawaii, "Hawaii is a free place, everybody lives well, Hawaii has freedom, so if you like to talk, you can talk, if you like to work, you can work." With the inclusion of women into brides, some women follow trends as things to do. As one Japanese bride, Motome Yoshimura, explains, "I want to come to the United States because everyone is coming in. So I joined the crowd."
Wedding process
The Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean ladies get bridal photos because men in Hawaii and the United States send photos back to their home country in search of the bride. Family members, often with the help of intermediaries (called nakodo in Japanese and joong-mae jaeng-i in Korean), use these photos to try to find a wife for the man who sent them. When looking at prospective brides, prospective buyers see the family background, health, age and wealth of women. The wedding process of bridal pictures is modeled after traditional marriage (called miai kekkon in Japanese and Joong-mae-kyulhon in Korean). The wedding photo of the bride is not much different from this arranged marriage custom, except as a man who has few roles that have no role. After the bride's name is entered into her husband's family registration, the marriage is considered official in Japan, and she is eligible for travel documents to the US or Hawaii. However, although this is enough in their home country, it is not considered a legitimate marriage form by the American government. Therefore, mass wedding ceremonies are held at the dock or at the hotel upon the arrival of the bride.
Immigration
The Gentlemen's agreement in 1907 stopped the issuance of passports to Japanese workers who tried to go to America or Hawaii. However, there are loopholes in the agreement that allow wives and children immigrate to be with their husbands and fathers. It's because of this gap that many bride images can immigrate to Hawaii and the United States. The impact of the Gentleman's Agreement is seen in the percentage of the male and female populations before and after being excluded. For example, 86.7 percent of Japanese received in the US before the Gentlemen Agreement were men, after an agreement only 41.6 percent of Japanese claimed to be men. The spread of the Japanese grew so rapidly that, in 1897, Japan was known as the largest single ethnic group in Hawaii, which comprised 40 percent of the population in 1900. Between 1907 and 1923 14.276 the Japanese bride and bride image 951 Korean brides arrived in Hawaii. Between 1908 and 1920 more than 10,000 brides arrived on the West Coast of the United States.
Arrival
It was a difficult journey for the bride. When they first arrived, they were asked to pass many checks at the immigration office. The United States government does not recognize pictorial marriage as legal; therefore, the bride will meet with their future husband for the first time and attend a mass wedding ceremony at the dock. Many of these women were surprised by what they found on arrival. Most women know about their husbands before meeting them based on the photos they send. However, the images presented do not necessarily represent real-life men. Men will send photos back to changed Japan and Korea, old, or different people altogether. Men often wear loan clothes and choose to pose with luxury items, like cars and homes, which they do not actually have.
One of the wedding brides summarizes the feelings of many brides after meeting their husbands, he writes, "I came to Hawaii and was very surprised and very disappointed, because my husband sent a handsome picture of twenty-five years old." He came to the dock, but I saw she's really old, looks old. He's forty-five years older than me. My heart is stuck. "On average, the grooms are ten to fifteen years older than their brides.Their husband's age is not the only surprise for women, they are also shocked by the conditions of their lives.Many women expect to live in homes as in photographs sent by people, but instead find rural, desolate, racially segregated plantations.One of the reasons why prospective brides and prospective husbands are not completely honest with bride and groom is because they believe that women will not come if they know the reality of the man and his condition.
Life in Hawaii
Although they now live in Hawaii, the Japanese bride still feels important to preserve their traditions and heritage. The values ​​they try to instill in their children are devotion, obligations to the community and authority ( to in Japanese), reciprocity obligations ( giri in Japanese) , the importance of hard work, perseverance, frugality, and the drive for success ( seiko in Japanese). Many brides work in plantations. By 1920 fourteen per cent of plantation workers were women, and of the women workers, eighty per cent were Japanese. In plantations they usually irrigate and weed out fields, cut down dried rattan, or cut off sugarcane beans. Men are given a similar task, but are often paid more. For example, in 1915, Japanese plantation workers made 55 cents compared to the 78 cents made by their male counterparts.
In addition to working in the fields, the women are also expected to take care of the house, including cooking, cleaning, sewing, and raising children. When a woman is unable to care for a child, she may work with her child on her back. Some pictures of the bride with the children leave the fields to work for single men by washing clothes, cooking, or providing clothing. Korean bride leaves the plantation life faster than many Japanese women do, and many move to Honolulu to start their own business. Regardless of whether they live on plantations or not, it is important for the bride to build communities among them through women's groups and churches.
Issues with practice
Although initially unhappy, most brides end up marrying or just accepting them so they do not embarrass their families. Japanese couples often come from the same area in Japan and therefore have fewer marital problems than Korean couples who often come from different regions of Korea. Though, there are exceptions to this, and not every marriage works. Some brides, having seen their husbands for the first time, rejected them and returned to Japan or Korea. Some married husbands are alcoholics, physically abusive, or trying to sell them to brothels, but many of these women stay in marriage for the sake of children. An example of a bride who remained married to her husband, despite her persecution, was Shizuko Tamaki; she and her husband were married for 50 years. Other people who initially married did not end up living with their husbands. The bride is forced to elope with another man, or kakeochi in Japanese. Elopement is very dangerous for the bride because it endangers her reputation and where they live in the United States. The married wife could be deported to Japan, following Japanese civil law giving husbands the ability to decide on their new wife's residence; for the women, the Women Home Missionary Society in the United States provided temporary housing while they were waiting to return to Japan. To find their missing wives, the husbands of these women would take a prize ad in the Issei community newspaper for anyone to find their wives.
Many Americans and Hawaiians thought that the Gentlemen's Treaty would end Japanese immigration to the United States, so that when a large number of brides began to arrive, he revived the Anti-Japanese Movement. The people who strongly oppose the immigration of Japanese and the bride are called exclusivists. They call wedding marriage an uncivilized image because it does not involve love or have morality; The exclusionists regard the marriage of the bride as a violation of the Gentlemen's Covenant, because they believe women are more like workers than wives to men. Exceptions are also afraid that children resulting from wedding bridal images will be a dangerous addition to the population as they will be able to buy land for their parents in the future. Also, some people, including many immigrant inspectors, think that wedding bridal photos are a disguise for the trade of prostitution. Overall, there is a negative sentiment towards the bride in Hawaii and the United States.
End of practice
To maintain a positive relationship with the United States, the Japanese government stopped issuing passports to describe the bride on March 1, 1920, because they were so unacceptable in the United States. The end of the photographer left about 24,000 bachelors without a path back to Japan and brought back a wife. Nonetheless, the bridal photograph and the men's agreement were able to create a second Japanese generation, Nisei, consisting of 30,000 people in 1920.
In popular culture
In 1987, a novel titled Picture Bride was written by Yoshiko Uchida, and told the story of a fictitious Japanese woman named Hana Omiya, a bride sent to live with her new husband in Oakland, California in 1917 The novel also focused on his experience at a Japanese internment camp in 1943.
In 1994, a movie titled Picture Bride (unrelated to Uchida's novel) was made by Hawaii-born director Kayo Hatta and starring Youki Kudoh in the title role. The film tells the story of Riyo, a Japanese woman whose picture was exchanged with a plantation worker taking her to Hawaii.
A 2003 Korean textbook titled Sajin Sinbu (Korean for "Picture Bride"), compiled by Park Nam Soo, provides a comprehensive Korean/Korean-American cultural approach to the topic, provides a historical overview of pictures of bridal phenomena in the Korean context, as well as related poems, short stories, essays, and critical essays written by various Korean/Korean-American writers. This book is compiled for a hundred years of Korea, marking the first hundred years anniversary of the arrival of Korean immigrants to the US territory in 1903 on board the RMSÃ,
The 2009 novel, Honolulu by Alan Brennert featured a Korean bride who came to Hawaii.
Julie Otsuka's 2011 novel entitled "The Buddha in the Attic" tells the lives of brides brought from Japan to San Francisco about a century ago and what it means to be an American in an uncertain period. This novel is the National Book Award for fiction finalists in 2011 and is listed short for the literary award of ImpAC Dublin 2013.
See also
- Order mail bride
- Proxy marriage
- List of Korean related topics
- List of Japanese related topics
- List of Chinese related topics
Footnote
References
- Bill, T. (n.d.). Field work and photographs of the bride's family at Hawai'i sugar estates, 1910 - 1920. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20160304044947/http://www.asianamericanmedia.org/picturebride/idx_field.html
- Chai, A. Y. (1979). "Mrs. K.": The oral history of the Korean bride. Women's Studies Newsletter, 7 (4), 10-13. Obtained from JSTOR.
- Chai, A. Y. (1988). The history of women in public: "bride" Hawaii. Women's Studies Quarterly, 16 (1/2), 51-62. Obtained from JSTOR.
- 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 the Complete Academic Search database.
- KVIE Public Television (Producer). (2010, 5 June). Central Japan valley - picture of bridal phenomenon [Video file].
- Lee, C. (2003). Prostitutes and brides photos: Chinese and Japanese immigration, settlement, and nation building, 1870-1920. Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, 70.
- Niiya, B. (Ed.). (2001). Encyclopedia of the American historical edition of renewal: A-z reference from 1868 to the present. New York: National Museum of American Japan.
- Ogawa, D & amp; 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
- Takaki, R. (1983). Pau hana: Plantation and Labor Life in Hawaii 1835-1920. University of Hawaii Press.
- Tanaka, K. (2004). Japanese wedding images and the image of immigrant women in the early 20th century California. The Japanese Journal of American Studies, 15, 115-138.
- Yasutake, R., (2004). Transnational women activism: the United States, Japan, and the Japanese immigrant community in California, 1859-1920. New York University Press.
External links
- The Real Story of a Korean Bride: Esther Kwon Arinaga
- About Picture Bride , Yoshiko Uchida's novel
- Information from the filmmaker about Picture Bride , filmed by Kayo Hatta
- Picture Bride on IMDb
- Korean early immigration sources Koreancentennial.org, including passport and immigration lists in downloadable.pdf format
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments