The first picture bride appears in Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada is Mrs.
Maki Fukushima, who came from Towa-cho (東和町), Oshima-gun (大島郡), in Yamaguchi Prefecture (山口県). The Seto Inland Sea (瀬戸内海) separates the island of Shikoku (四国) from the Honshu mainland (本州). Oshima, also known as Yashiro Island (屋代島), means
“big island” in Japanese. It is the third largest island in the Seto Inland Sea, just after Awajishima Island (淡路島) and Shodoshima Island (小豆島). According to Makabe’s
research, because the rapid stream area between Oshima and the Honshu mainland is “so dangerous,” it was believed that “no bridge could be built” across the narrow strait before 1970s (41). Attributed to the Oshima Bridge built in 1976, nowadays the island could be easily accessible by car, and the bridge even changed the local lifestyle in Oshima. In fact, because Oshima mainly consists of mountains and hills and features little cultivable land, there has been a long tradition for the islanders, in order to survive, to leave their hometown and become migrant workers. Nevertheless, as Makabe indicates, because of the bridge, many Oshima young people, who had migrated to work on the mainland such as Hiroshima or Osaka, could return to Oshima and become commuters (41). Moreover, in alliance with the improved transportation of the island, people in Oshima began to develop its tourist industry, gaining profit from the beautiful scenery of the island. Indeed, the Oshima Bridge is quite important for the regional development of Oshima, and motivates migrants to return to the island. However, at the same time, the island’s migration tradition and history also gradually fade out in public memory. According to Makabe, “emigration . . . from the island began as an extension of the custom of migrant work which had been carried on for a very long time”
(41). Yet, when she visited Oshima in the early 1980s, she found that “[l]ooking at the Oshima of today, there is no telling how greatly the toil and suffering of the emigrants
affected the lives of the people of the island. Emigration, in the form of temporary labour, . . . has left no traces, no matter where one looks on the island, and no matter with whom one speaks” (42-43).12 Particularly, Makabe regards Mrs. Maki Fukushima’s stories as the missing pieces of Oshima’s regional history, and suggests interpreting her picture bride experience in terms of Oshima’s migrating tradition.
As mentioned above, due to the limited natural resources, Oshima’s men had engaged
12 Even though Makabe in the early 1980s found that the emigration history was almost forgotten by Oshima’s local people, the history was gradually recovered during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1999, The Museum of Japanese Emigration to Hawaii was opened in Ohshima, and has become a tourist attraction of the island. For more information about the Museum of Japanese Emigration to Hawaii in Oshima, visit their website http://www.towatown.jp/hawaii/english/.
historically in migrant work. And when the Japanese government in 1884 initiated its project to send government-sponsored contract workers to Hawaii, working overseas became another attractive option for Oshima people and many Oshima men applied for job offers from the project. As Makabe points out, on the first boat loaded with Japanese emigrants to Hawaii, 30 percent of the 944 men were from Oshima and thereafter “Oshima-gun became a precursor for regions sending emigrants to Hawaii and North America” (42). While the ways in which Japanese emigrants moved to North America varied over time as a result of the shifting immigration laws of the United States and Canada, the number of Oshima men migrating to North America had been steady from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s.
Mrs. Maki Fukushima was born in 1892, when people in Oshima had gripped with emigration to North America. Comparing her home village with other neighboring villages in the 1910s, Mrs. Maki Fukushima indicated that her home village—Towa-cho—sent relatively fewer emigrants to North America since people of her village could still “get along without going abroad” at that time (44). Yet, Mrs. Maki Fukushima admitted that she had been fascinated with the idea of going to North America owing to her family’s economic hardship.
Before she was born, her father had sold the family land and engaged in the transportation business between the island and the mainland. When she was growing up, the business was gradually falling off and her family eventually went bankrupt. Inspired by her cousin, a temporary worker who went to Hawaii and then earned himself his own tailor shop in Seattle, Mrs. Maki Fukushima assumed that it was extremely easy to make money in America and longed to work there. As Mrs. Maki Fukushima indicated, “I didn’t know what kind of men he was, but I was happy as long as I could get to America. . . . I wanted go somewhere to make money . . . , and not bother to get married” (47). When Mrs. Maki Fukushima entered the picture bride marriage, she considered herself more a worker than a bride. More precisely, Mrs. Maki Fukushima believed that she was one of the early temporary workers from Oshima,
who would earn big money in America and then return to her hometown. According to Mrs.
Maki Fukushima’s original plan, she and her husband would have stayed in Canada about three to five years. She remembered well the words her grandmother told her before her departure to North America: “Going to America is like going to climb a golden mountain. So I’ll wait for you to come back with money” (47). Besides, her mother-in-law also soothed her that “[y]ou’re coming back soon, so don’t be sad; just go. And you’re not to cry when you leave” (47). It is clear that as Mrs. Maki Fukushima departed from Oshima, she did not plan to settle in Canada.
Mrs. Maki Fukushima’s mentality as a temporary worker greatly affected her life in Canada. She admitted that she and her husband had kept up “the migrant worker spirit” in Canada and thus they were “concentrating on going back to Japan” (54). Indeed, Mrs. Maki Fukushima had maintained intimate relationship with Oshima. In 1920, during her third pregnancy, she went back to her hometown with her husband and two sons. As her husband traveled back to Canada few months later, she stayed in Japan for about one and a half year.
In 1922, she left her three children in Oshima with her mother, and went back to Canada. As she stated, “[b]y getting the children looked after, we’d both be free to work, we thought, and we really would save up some money this time” (54). Obviously, Mrs. Maki Fukushima firmly believed that she would return to Japan after making enough money in Canada. Her next trip back to Oshima occurred three years later, when her mother, who was responsible for taking care of the children, was sick. This time, she and her husband built their own house in Oshima. For about two or three years, Mrs. Maki Fukushima and her three children lived in Oshima as her husband went back to Canada to work alone and send money back to them.
In this period, Mrs. Maki Fukushima’s family adopted a lifestyle that was quite similar to that of other migrant workers’ family—men left to engage in temporary work either in the
mainland or in foreign countries, and women stayed on the island, nurturing the children.
Even though Mrs. Maki Fukushima eventually took her three children with her to Canada in 1927, reunited with her husband, and decided to settle down in Canada, she kept her house in Oshima without selling it. As Mrs. Maki Fukushima recalled, during the wartime, when her husband died and the children all grew up, she seriously considered going back to her home village and living in the house alone. Despite the fact that Mrs. Maki Fukushima finally chose to stay with her children in Canada, her migrant worker mentality, her frequent travel
between Oshima and Canada as well as her long residency on the island during the 1920s all suggest that her picture bride experience is not only the outset of Japanese Canadian history, but also a segment of Oshima’s regional history.