Picture Bride (1995) is a feature film that depicts Japanese picture brides’ lives on the sugarcane field in Hawaii. The film was well-received by critics and won the Audience Award for narrative feature film at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Kayo Hatta, the film’s cowriter and director, was even named “the protector of the picture bride’s stories” in her interview with Gail S. Tagashira. As this name suggests, one of the selling points of the film is its authenticity in illustrating the picture bride history. According to Joe McDonald, Picture Bride was based on Hatta’s extensive historical research, her grandmother’s memories, and the interviews with twenty picture brides (52). Hatta in her interview with David Sterritt also stated that “[a] lot of the incidents [in the film] are based on things that actually happened” as
“[the] story is kind of a mixture. We composited the different interviews we did into one character.” However, some scholars still question the validity of the film. Peter X. Feng in
“Pioneering Romance: Immigration, Americanization, and Asian Women” argues that instead of being a film which is “historically accurate,” Picture Bride in fact “depart[s] from
historical fact” (39). Concentrating on the ending of Picture Bride when the protagonist Riyo realizes that there is no one back “home” waiting for her and eventually decides to stay in Hawaii after meeting her mentor-like friend, Kana’s ghost, Feng defines Picture Bride as one of “the narratives of acculturation and assimilation” (39). He indicates that “to the extent that these movies depart from historical fact, they reveal the discursive construction of
proto-Asian American communities, projections of contemporary desires to cast Asian migrants in our own images” (39). He further illustrates that Riyo’s choice to stay in America
“reflect[s] contemporary Asian American frustrations with being cast as eternal foreigners.
American-born Asians counter the perception that we are foreign-born by telling the stories of the first migrants to the United States, both to establish how long we’ve been here and also to claim immigrants as ultra-American” (39). According to Feng, Picture Bride is a
production with Asian American’s political intent to “claim America” rather than a faithful representation of picture brides’ lives in North America.
Taking cue from Feng’s indication that the “historical fact” of picture bride experiences is often shrouded by political intention and thus lacking authentic voices from picture bride individuals, I propose in this chapter to examine Obaachan’s Garden, a documentary directed by Linda Ohama to record her grandmother’s personal stories as a picture bride in Canada.
When documentary films are supposed to be “derived from and limited to actuality,” I wonder if Obaachan’s Garden lends more weight to the authenticity of picture bride experience in the form of documentary (McLane 3). While Feng criticizes Hatta’s Asian American political intention demonstrated in the ending of Picture Bride since Riyo “decides to devote [her life] to America (to becoming American) rather than to Asia (to being Asian),”
I am interested in Ohama’s way of presenting her grandmother’s life stories, which may reinforce or depart from what Feng calls the “becoming American” mentality (39). In an attempt to provide an alternative perspective concerning a picture bride’s intricate relationship with Japan, I particularly focus on the images of Japan demonstrated in Obaachan’s Garden.
Obaachan’s Garden has received lots of awards. Remarkably, though it is a documentary about Ohama’s family, it has earned wide acclaim for its historical and educational
significance.7 In Resource Links, J. Patrick Romaine indicates that this film is
“recommended for senior high to adult students” as “[i]t is a resource that could support
7 Obaachan’s Garden has won awards, including Audience Choice Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and the Newport Beach International Film Festival, the Silver Medal at the Torino International Film Festival, a Genie nomination for best feature length documentary, five Leo Awards and Richmond City Heritage Award.
Social Studies, Family Studies, Media or English classes.” Viewed as “the last living picture bride in Canada” before she died in 2002, Asayo appeared on the screen as a feisty matriarch and, for some critics, turned into a representative of Japanese picture bride (Iuchi, “Asayo Murakami: The Last Picture Bride”). Gregory Strong asserts that Obaachan’s Garden
“recreate[s] a life representative of many Japanese women emigrants” (11). Merna Forster’s recently published book, 100 Canadian Heroines: Famous and Forgotten Faces, also includes Asayo’s life stories and states that “Obaachan’s Garden will help ensure that a
‘picture bride’ with incredible determination and endurance is not forgotten” (191). In this sense, Asayo’s personal history seems to stand for a typical experience of picture brides. Yet, it is noticeable that even though Obaachan’s Garden consists of Asayo’s experiences both in Japan and Canada, including a family trip to Japan organized by Ohama to explore Asayo’s Japanese past, most scholars still confine their attention to Asayo’s life in Canada after her immigration. For example, Ken Eisner points out that “Obaachan’s Garden delves deeply into one Japanese Canadian’s century-old story—involving displacement, atomic annihilation and remarkable rebirth” (34). Additionally, Monika Kin Gagnon in her “Cinematic
Imag(in)ings of the Japanese Canadian Internment” bespeaks how Asayo’s garden in the film
“plays a central role as refuge,” especially during the wartime (281). Moreover, just like Feng who regards Picture Bride as a production of Asian American’s desire to “claim America,”
Rocío G. Davis also considers Obaachan’s Garden a political creation for Japanese Canadians to claim a place for themselves in Canada’s mainstream historical and cultural narratives since the film blends private stories and public histories, “invit[ing] us to revise uncritical historical and cultural perspectives about ethnic or racialized subjects, introducing them into the nation’s political and social records” (“Locating Family” 2).
Whereas scholars center on Asayo’s experiences in Canada so as to legitimately “place Asian Canadian persons as elements of the portrait of Canada” (Davis, “Locating Family” 3),
Roy Miki in “Global Drift: Thinking the Beyond of Identity Politics” interprets Obaachan’s Garden as an example of Japanese Canadian’s floating identity. Given that identity formation is “an always provisional formation” that is “always being interrupted by shifting spaces and times” (153), Miki states:
What I found so compelling was that Ohama’s film itself had become, through the unexpected disclosure of Asayo’s secret, an effect of a global drift. As Asayo releases her secret, in that very gesture, the identity formation of Japanese Canadians, which had been formed linearly through its negotiations with the Canadian nation-state, was altered by the more malleable and spatially more
encompassing signs of “Japan” in their history. We might say that the film performs an opening that releases Japanese Canadians from the need to be constantly vigilant in declaring themselves “Canadian” and not “Japanese.” (154)
Although Miki does not provide further analysis of the Japanese images or stories in the documentary, his succinct criticism indeed opens a new critical perspective: unlike Picture Bride that is criticized by Feng as one of “narratives of acculturation and assimilation,”
Obaachan’s Garden should be viewed as a demonstration of how the Japanese Canadians attempt to rebuild their relationship with their ancestral country.
Miki’s illuminating argument encourages us to reexamine Japanese Canadians’
transnational history, particularly their connections with Japan. Yet, since Miki explicitly indicates that it is “the unexpected disclosure of Asayo’s secret” that propels Ohama’s family to reconfigure their identity formation, I wonder what are the “signs of ‘Japan’” Miki
mentioned here. Through an analysis of the images of Japan presented in Obaachan’s Garden, I propose to scrutinize Asayo’s as well as her offspring’s connections to Japan so as to
question the domestic paradigm in the making of Japanese North American history. As Asayo’s hundred-year life story is inextricably intertwined with the history of Japan, what are
the images of Japan presented in the film? How do these images enable us to understand Asayo’s life and self? Additionally, how does the revelation of Asayo’s Japanese stories serve as a catalyst to foster her Japanese Canadian family members’ relationship with Japan?
Obaachan’s Garden opens with a five-minute prologue. The camera moves from a rural area of naked trees to a little girl walking through the field. The little girl is Asayo’s great granddaughter, Caitlin. A series of questions are asked through Caitlin’s voice-over: “How do we learn about things that have happened before us? And what about memories? Are these memories always real? And what about what we dream or wish for? Can they become real one day?” These questions make manifest Japanese Canadians’ curiosity about the past they did not know, a past of which Asayo’s concealed Japanese memories constitute an important part. This interest in the past, moreover, is linked to the granddaughter’s present life and her dreams and wishes. Asayo’s past life as such is connected to Caitlin’s present life. The
memories before Caitlin was born become essential for Caitlin’s understanding of herself and her future.
After the prologue shows Caitlin’s arrival in a field of cherry blossoms, the image suddenly turns into black-and-white, taking the audience back to Hiroshima Prefecture in 1923: the young Obaachan wore kimono, sat in a dimly-lit Japanese-style room, and soliloquized her experience of the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923 and her subsequent separations from her first husband and her two daughters, Fumiko and Chieko. Despite the fact that this sequence is a dramatization, the director enhances the validity of the stories by superimposing the old Asayo’s voice-over in Japanese on the appearance of the young Obaachan (played in the documentary by one of Asayo’s granddaughters). Moreover, a huge amount of archival footage about the Great Kanto earthquake, the victims of the earthquake, the Imperial Palace as well as images of two little Japanese girls that embody Asayo’s missing daughters are all inserted in this dramatization. This presentation of Asayo’s stories
in Japan, however, is soon interrupted by the talking head of Asayo, who rejected to provide other information about her Japanese experiences: “That’s enough now. I have nothing else to say. Zero. Zero. Zero.”
Asayo rejected to remember. Yet one should not forget that it was indeed Asayo’s rejection gesture that initially pushed Ohama to make Obaachan’s Garden. At first, Ohama was thinking of celebrating Asayo’s 100th birthday. Her intention was to take this birthday celebration as the highlight—one of the most glorious moments of Asayo’s life—to commemorate Asayo’s successful life in Canada. However, when the five generations of Asayo’s family assembled at Alberta for the birthday party, Asayo was absent from the scene.
She refused to attend it. As Ohama stated in the film, “of course everyone is disappointed.
But no one understands what she’s feeling.” In order to figure out Asayo’s feelings, Ohama could not but change her filming plan. Initially set to be a family film that would conclude at the extended family’s grand gathering on Asayo’s 100th birthday, Obaachan’s Garden now takes this failed birthday party as a point of departure. Moreover, instead of celebrating Asayo’s successful assimilation to Canada, as Ohama originally planned for her film,
Obaachan’s Garden now drives toward a different direction—to explore Asayo’s past, which was previously unknown to her Canadian family members. The birthday party, though being a failure, ironically opened the door to the revelation of Asayo’s hidden past.
Interestingly, despite Asayo’s frequent rejection to reveal her Japanese past, Asayo could still be recognized as a co-producer of Obaachan’s Garden since it was her rejection gesture that motivated Ohama to probe into her concealed Japanese past. In several interviews, Ohama underlined Asayo’s participation in the film’s production: “Every time my
grandmother told me something[,] I just knew she was leading us somewhere” (Strong 11); “I think my grandmother wisely manipulated the situation. She knew I was a filmmaker; she knew I wanted to tell her story; and she led me into her story for two-and-a-half years before
she revealed the other half. I was in so far at that point, I couldn’t turn around” (qtd. in Amsden 31). According to Cynthia Amsden, it is at the juncture when Asayo deviously revealed her Japanese past little by little that “the subject became the auteur” (30). Asayo changed the film’s direction, circuitously leading her Canadian family as well as the audience into her intricate connections with Japan. Yet, on the other hand, she was undemonstrative and cowardly when being asked to confront her Japanese past. The bond between her and Japan was never brought to light before the documentary project. At first sight, it seems that she completely abandoned her Japanese past after she came to Canada as she kept all her past in silence over her seventy years in Canada. Ohama claimed at the beginning of the film:
“For us, Obaachan has been our Japaneseness. But we’ve never really understood very much about her or the culture. . . . [M]ore of what we know is from what’s not said than what is said, which leaves a lot of things buried in that silence.”
As the scattered pieces of Asayo’s Japanese experiences were revealed and retold in the film, however, the importance of Japan becomes undeniable in one’s understanding of Asayo.
Asayo’s stories depicted in the film could be roughly divided into four stages: life in Hiroshima, early immigration life, the evacuation during the Second World War, and the postwar years. In-between these linear constructions of Asayo’s stories, glimpses of Japan’s national history are introduced to indicate the existence of an underside of Asayo’s life and self.