再現日本：日本照片新娘敘事

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩士論文 Master’s Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 再現日本：日本照片新娘敘事. Re-presenting Japan in Japanese Picture Bride Narratives. 指導教授：李秀娟博士 Advisor: Dr. Hsiu-Chuan Lee 研究生：林恩伃 En-Yu Lin. 中華民國 104 年 7 月 July 2015.

(2) 摘要本篇論文旨在研究二十世紀初期的日本照片新娘。雖然自一九七零年代起，歷史學家及社會學家就開始關注照片新娘的歷史，而日本照片新娘的生命經驗亦呈現於許多日裔美國文學作品中，但是，照片新娘和其日本祖國間的關係卻一直未得到學界應有的重視。本論文透過探討琳達·奧哈瑪（Linda Ohama）的家庭紀錄片《祖母的花園》（Obaachan’s Garden）以及真壁知子（Tomoko Makabe）的口述歷史著作《照片新娘：加拿大的日本女性》（Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada），意圖呈現日本照片新娘在日本及日美跨太平洋歷史進程中的重要性。本論文分為四章。第一章為緒論，簡述照片新娘歷史並闡明在當前照片新娘研究中，照片新娘的日本經驗和日本回憶研究之不足。第二章探討紀錄片《祖母的花園》中照片新娘及其後裔透過不同方式再/建構他們和日本的聯繫。我特別關注此紀錄片中所呈現的日本意象如何展示個人經驗、家庭記憶、族裔歷史以及日本國家歷史間相互交織的關係。第三章則閱讀《照片新娘：加拿大的日本女性》中五位照片新娘的口述歷史。我論述真壁知子如何從一個新移民的角度強調照片新娘在日本史以及日本加拿大移民史中的重要性，並主張日本照片新娘跨國經驗可以幫助我們了解二十世紀初期的日本文化以及區域發展。第四章總結此論文，並思考相關議題未來研究的方向。. 關鍵字：日本照片新娘、「一世」女性、《祖母的花園》、《照片新娘：加拿大的日本女性》、日本、日本北美研究.

(3) Abstract This thesis conducts a study of Japanese picture brides in the early twentieth century. Although picture bride history has attracted the attention of historians and sociologists since the 1970s, and their life stories are commonly represented in many Japanese North American literary works, picture brides’ affiliations with their country of origin have not yet been fully investigated. In this thesis, through examining Linda Ohama’s family documentary Obaachan’s Garden and Tomoko Makabe’s oral historical project Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada, I demonstrate Japanese picture brides’ importance in making the cross-Pacific history of both Japan and Japanese North America. This thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One serves as an introduction, in which I provide an overview of the picture bride history and discuss the inadequate attention given to picture brides’ Japanese experiences and memories in existing scholarship. Chapter Two centers on the different ways picture brides and their offspring re/connect to Japan in Obaachan’s Garden. Attention is given to how the images of Japan presented in the family documentary display the intertwined connections between personal, family, ethnic as well as Japan’s national histories. Chapter Three studies five picture brides’ oral testimonies recorded in Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada. I examine how Makabe, from a Shin-Issei’s perspective, emphasizes Japanese picture brides’ significance in both Japanese and Japanese Canadian history. I also point out that picture brides’ transnational experiences could enrich our understanding of the culture and regional developments of Japan in the turn of the twentieth century. Chapter Five concludes this thesis with thoughts for future research.. Key words: Japanese picture brides, Issei women, Obaachan’s Garden, Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada, Japan, Japanese North American Studies.

(4) Acknowledgements My journey through graduate school toward the completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the generous support of inspiring mentors, caring friends, and my loving family. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Hsiu-Chuan Lee, whose seminar on Asian American Literature aroused my interest in Asian American studies and introduced me to the study of Japanese picture brides. From my early days of graduate school, Professor Lee advised me with incisive criticism and good cheer. During the process of thesis writing, her unwavering guidance, warm encouragement, constructive comments, and tireless editing of my manuscripts have made the completion of this thesis possible. Also, I am very fortunate to have had Professor Chih-Ming Wang and Professor Ioana Luca as my committee members. They asked thoughtful questions, and helped me clarify and push forward my arguments. In addition, I would like to thank my friends for their encouragement and support along the way. I cannot imagine graduate school without Sonja You, Jessica Huang, and Amber Chen—they were always encouraging and provided helpful suggestions for my studies. Thanks are also due to my friends, Feng-I Chien, Wei-Xuan Zheng, Tsui-Wen Pan, Ting-Yu Chen and I-Lin Hsieh, who have always been supportive. Finally, I want to express my utmost appreciation and dedicate my thesis to my parents and sister. Their love and unflagging faith in me are the strongest support for me to overcome all difficulties and accomplish this significant academic project..

(5) Table of Contents. Chapter One ............................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction Chapter Two ........................................................................................................................... 22 Between Family Memory and National History: The Hidden Japanese Past in Linda Ohama’s Obaachan’s Garden Chapter Three ........................................................................................................................ 42 From a Shin-Issei’s Perspective: Tomoko Makabe’s Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada Chapter Four .......................................................................................................................... 66 Coda Works Cited ............................................................................................................................ 69.

(6) Lin 1. Chapter One Introduction. Modeled upon Japanese tradition of arranged marriage, picture bride marriage (shashin kekkon) was a practice commonly adopted by Japanese immigrants in North America in the early twentieth century. Interceded by a “go-between,” normally a relative or acquaintance of the immigrant man, the marriage between the immigrant bachelor and his prospective bride was arranged by the heads of the two households after the couple exchanged their photographs and background information. Fostered by the Gentlemen’s Agreement in the United States and the Hayashi-Lemieux Gentlemen’s Agreement in Canada, both of which limited the immigration of Japanese laborers yet allowed Japanese women to immigrate as wives of residents, the picture bride measure was frequently implemented after 1908.1 Up until the U.S. and Canadian governments prohibited the entry of all Japanese in 1924 and 1928 respectively, many Japanese women as picture brides immigrated to North America, particularly to Hawaii, California, and British Columbia. Between 1908 and 1924, the so-called Yobiyose Jidai (period of summoning families), over 10,000 picture brides arrived in the United States (Tanaka 116), and 6,240 picture brides entered Canada (Ayukawa, “Good Wives” 108). Leading to a considerable increase in the number of the Nisei and rendering Japanese immigrant men from sojourners to permanent residents, the arrival of picture brides set up a milestone in Japanese North American history. The first wave of large-scale Japanese immigration to North America occurred in the late nineteenth century. The Meiji Restoration in 1868 brought about dramatic socio-economic changes to Japan through urbanization and industrialization, which resulted in social disruption and agricultural decline. Within this context, many farmers found it difficult to 1. In the early twentieth century, due to the Japanese colonization during 1905-1945, many Korean women also immigrated to the United States through the picture bride practice. Yet, this thesis will focus on the studies of Japanese picture brides..

(7) Lin 2. survive in Japan and chose to immigrate to North America as dekasegi rodo (temporary migrant laborers). The early Japanese immigrants were mostly men, particularly young bachelors. These immigrants initially identified themselves as sojourners, aiming to earn income in foreign lands and eventually return to Japan. Nevertheless, in most cases, the low wages and arduous labor shattered Japanese immigrants’ dream of going back to Japan with financial success. Furthermore, leading hard and lonely lives in a predominantly male society triggered many men to squander their earnings on gambling, drinking and prostitution. Attempting to “reform the demoralized immigrant Japanese society,” the leaders of the Japanese immigrant community believed that summoning wives from Japan was one viable solution to the problems of gambling, drinking and prostitution (Tanaka 115). Besides, Japanese immigrant community also faced the challenges of racial discrimination. In the early twentieth century, growing hostility to increasing Japanese immigration led to anti-Japanese movements. For example, in 1906, San Francisco School Board passed a regulation which required Japanese pupils to attend racially segregated schools. Also, a serious anti-Oriental riot in Vancouver broke out in 1907. In response to public hostility towards Japanese immigrants, the U.S. government signed with the Japanese government in 1907 a Gentlemen’s Agreement, which was followed by the 1908 Hayashi-Lemieux Gentlemen’s Agreement signed between Japan and Canada. Both agreements limited the number of Japanese laborers but allowed the entry for wives and families of those already inhabiting North America. Though blocking the immigration of new Japanese laborers, the two aforementioned agreements fostered Japanese family unification and accelerated the immigration of Japanese women. In the early twentieth century, the moral reformation of Japanese immigrant society and the enforcement of immigration laws in both the United States and Canada entailed the transition of Japanese immigration from the dekasegi rodo (temporary migrant laborers) period to the Yobiyose Jidai (period of summoning families)..

(8) Lin 3. Between 1908 and 1924, the Yobiyose Jidai, there was a huge influx of Japanese female immigrants to North America. Among them, only some were the wives who had been left behind in Japan by formerly domiciled immigrants; the majority were picture brides. Under the anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibited interracial marriages between Japanese and Caucasians, Japanese bachelors sought wives in two ways. First, single men went back to Japan to seek mates and then took their wives to North America. Yet, the trip back to Japan involved a considerable cost in time and money that few bachelors could afford. Additionally, some immigrants were at the risk of being conscripted by the Japanese government if returning to Japan. Therefore, the majority of Japanese bachelors resorted to the second way—the picture bride practice. Instead of returning to Japan, the immigrants were assisted by a go-between in exchanging photos and background information with their prospective spouses. Even though the wedding ceremonies in Japan were usually carried out in the absence of grooms, picture bride marriage was still legally recognized by Japanese government as long as the name of the bride entered the koseki (family register) of the husband. Six months after the marriage registration, the picture bride could apply for a passport to North America to live with the husband whom she had never met. The picture bride system was practical and efficient and hence was commonly adopted by the bachelors. Throughout the Yobiyose Jidai, 14,276 Japanese picture brides immigrated to Hawaii (Chai, “Picture Brides: Feminist Analysis” 125), 6,321 to the U.S. mainland (Ichioka 343), and 6,240 to Canada (Ayukawa, “Good Wives” 108). The massive arrival of picture brides resulted in significant demographic changes in the Japanese communities in North America. First, it adjusted the sex ratio. According to the U.S. census, the sex ratio of Japanese American community in 1900 was every female for twenty-five males, yet by 1920 it became one for two males (Glenn 30-31). A similar situation prevailed in Canada and in Hawaii. Additionally, picture brides contributed to an.

(9) Lin 4. enormous increase in the number of the Nisei, the North American-born children of the immigrants. Between 1900 and 1930, the number of the Nisei children grew from 269 to 68,357 in the United States (Ichioka 354-55). By 1941, over 60 percent of all 23,149 Japanese Canadians were native born (Oiwa, “A Stone Voice” 122). Yuji Ichioka indicates that “The growth of Nisei children accelerated the transformation of the Japanese from sojourners to permanent settlers as the parent generation ultimately identified its own future with that of its children in America” (355). In this sense, the arrival of picture brides brought about a significant transition of Japanese immigrant community. Japanese North Americans changed their goal from returning back to Japan with wealth to settling in North America. Although the arrival of picture brides stabilized the immigrant society, the picture bride practice existed for only a short period of time in history. The influx of Japanese female immigrants and the dramatic increase of the Nisei population aroused growing concerns and controversy from Caucasian communities. First, viewed as an extended form of traditional Japanese arranged marriage, the picture bride measure was attacked as “proof of the savagery and primitive nature of Asian marriage customs” because the couples were not married for romantic love (Tanaka 128). Also, anti-Japanese protesters proclaimed that Japanese female laborers exploited a loophole of the Gentlemen’s Agreement through the picture bride practice. According to Ichioka, anti-Japanese agitators asserted that “Female laborers disguised as brides . . . entered the United States, thereby deviously undermining the intent of the agreement” (355). Furthermore, anti-Japanese agitators declaimed that the exponential growth of the Nisei, which resulted from the arrival of picture brides, jeopardized the interest of Caucasian citizens. For example, not permitted to purchase land because of their ineligibility to citizenship, the Issei Japanese immigrants bought land under the name of their children, the citizens of the United States. To reduce the growing anti-Japanese sentiment in Americas, Japanese government ceased issuing picture bride passports in December 1919..

(10) Lin 5. After 1920, Japanese bachelors could only return to Japan, marry, and bring back their wives with them. Four years later, even the last option became unavailable because of the enactment of a new Immigrant Act, which completely excluded immigrants from Asia. In 1928, the government of Canada also instituted a revised Hayashi-Lemieux Gentlemen’s Agreement. As a part of this revision, the picture bride practice was terminated in Canada.2 Despite the fact that most Issei women are picture brides and they play crucial roles in the growth of Japanese North American community, it was not until the late 1970s that historians and sociologists initiated the studies of picture brides. Yuji Ichioka, a pioneering historian in picture bride studies, challenges the scholarship of his time, which “[has] seldom bothered to study women, especially working-class immigrant women” (345). Ichioka has provided details of picture bride marriage in his article “Amerika Nadeshiko: Japanese Immigrant Women in the United States, 1900-1924,” in which he underlines how picture brides’ presence altered the characteristic of Japanese immigrant society, transforming immigrants from sojourners into permanent residents. Other scholars endeavor to reconstruct the life stories of picture brides in both historical and cultural contexts. For instance, after immigrating to Canada, Tomoko Makabe, a Japan-born sociologist, befriended several Issei women and developed empathy for them. She wrote a biographical book, Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada, which thoroughly recorded five picture brides’ experiences. In addition, Alice Yun Chai has conducted a slide-tape project that includes twenty interviews of picture brides. In her later article “Picture Brides: Feminist Analysis of Life Histories of Hawai’i’s Early Immigrant Women from Japan, Okinawa, and Korea,” Chai further argues that picture brides confronted racial and ethnic oppressions with the help from other immigrant women, religious faith, and the memories of their Japanese female forebears.. 2. In 1923, the Canada government amended the 1908 Hayashi-Lemieux agreement, reducing the number of male Japanese immigrants from 400 male immigrants per year to a maximum of 150 annually. In 1928, the Gentlemen’s Agreement was amended further to include women and children in the count of 150 and to terminate the picture bride practice (Adachi 137-38)..

(11) Lin 6. As picture brides’ life stories attract the attention of historians and sociologists, novelists and filmmakers since the late 1980s have also viewed the experience of Japanese picture brides as a source of inspiration. Works with explicit picture bride theme include: Yoshiko Uchida’s Picture Bride (1987), Milton Murayama’s Five Years on a Rock (1994), Yoji Yamaguchi’s Face of a Stranger (1995), and Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic (2011). These four novels reconstruct the lives of picture brides. Among visual works, Kayo Hatta directed her feature film Picture Bride in 1995 and Linda Ohama produced her family documentary Obaachan’s Garden in 2001. As the mothers of the majority of the Nisei, picture brides also commonly appear—albeit implicitly—in texts dealing with the Nisei or even Sansei’s life.3. Readings of picture bride narratives have been heavily influenced by the Asian American literary movement, which emerged in the wake of the American civil rights and ethnic movements in the late 1960s. One of the most important ideologies presented by the Asian American movement is “claiming America.” Defined by Sau-ling C. Wong, “claiming America” is a strategy to “[establish] the Asian American presence in the context of the United States’ national cultural legacy and contemporary cultural production” (16). Attempting to ensure Asian Americans’ American identity, critics at the time of the movement argued that Asian American narratives had been left out of dominant historical and cultural formation of the United States. The subsequent propagation of Asian American literary works in the 1970s and 1980s that center on immigrants and their settlements in Americas could be understood as a response to this cultural movement. Because Japanese immigrants experienced the trauma of internment during World War II and thereby kept silent about their. 3. For example, Ito Sawa in Milton Murayama’s novel All I Asking for Is My Body, Hatsue in Wakako Yamauchi’s “Songs of My Mother Taught Me,” Tome Hayashi in Hisaye Yamamoto’s “Seventeen Syllables,” and Ruth’s grandmother in Ruth Ozeki’s autobiographical film Halving the Bones are all picture brides..

(12) Lin 7. immigrant history in North America, to resurrect the existence of Japanese immigrants in both historical record and cultural memory appears a rather difficult task. In her “From Japan, to Meet a New Husband,” Sue Ferguson indicates that even though the Japanese internment history “has gained a foothold in the country’s consciousness—in large part due to the official apology then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney issued in 1988,” Japanese immigrants’ stories are still “less familiar” (52). As a result, she underlines the significance of Obaachan’s Garden for it narrates “the story of how many of those wartime internees arrived on Canada’s shores” (52). Renee H. Shea reviews The Buddha in the Attic from a similar perspective. Titling her article “The Urgency of Knowing,” Shea appreciates Otsuka’s portrayal of picture brides’ shared experiences in, as described by Otsuka’s own words, “the invisible world.” Shea particularly focuses on the internment episode of The Buddha in the Attic, which from white townspeople’s point of view depicts the sudden disappearance of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and indicates that “Otsuka offers . . . a reminder of where prejudice and fear can lead. She won’t let us forget this chapter in the history books, this episode of America’s polyglot culture, this Buddha in the attic.” Taking Obaachan’s Garden as an example, Rocío G. Davis also states that through uncovering picture bride stories in a family documentary, Linda Ohama, like other Canadian Japanese filmmakers, attempts to “recover and recreate the past, and to claim for their forebears and, by extension, for themselves, a place in Canada’s historical and cultural narrative” (“Locating Family” 3). In this sense, Japanese North Americans’ anxiety about how to claim a place for their community in either Canadian or the U.S. national culture is commonly recognized in picture bride literary studies. In her “Lost in the Passage: (Japanese American) Women in Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic,” JaeEun Yoo takes a step further to interpret picture bride narratives, drawing an analogy between Japanese Americans and other minority community in the United States. Like Shea, Yoo also focuses on the last chapter “Disappearance” of The.

(13) Lin 8. Buddha in the Attic and illustrates a parallel between the anti-Japanese sentiment after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the collective frenzy of rage towards Arab and Muslim Americans after 9/11. According to Yoo, picture bride narratives, which record the traumatic collective experiences of Japanese American community, reflect a repetitive pattern in American history that the rights and liberties of a specific minority have been sacrificed under the excuse of national security. The aforementioned “claiming America” readings appreciate the significance of picture bride narratives as the narratives give voice to Japanese North American community and even to other minority groups. However, while critical attention is mainly paid to the experiences that enable these Issei women as well as the whole Japanese North American community to demonstrate their “indigenization,” namely their sociohistorical presence in the North American memory and history, so as to assert their North American identity, picture brides’ unique life experiences, such as their distinctive marriage measure, their specific immigrating background and so forth, tend to be neglected. Apart from the goal of “claiming America,” many studies of picture bride narratives employ feminist perspectives. While scholars’ “claiming America” concentrates on the issues of racism and Japanese Americans’ civil rights, critics with feminist perspectives are more interested in scrutinizing picture brides’ female subjectivity and agency by analyzing these immigrant women’s negotiation with racialization in the host society as well as the Japanese patriarchal oppression. In his “Under the Burden of Yellow Peril: Race, Class, and Gender in Yoshiko Uchida’s Picture Bride,” Montye P. Fuse states that picture brides’ participation in the marriage arrangement demonstrates certain forms of agency. That is, despite the fact that picture bride marriage was usually arranged by the heads of the two households involved, most picture brides acknowledged that immigrating to America was a better option than living in Japan, and hence accepted the arrangement. Yet, he further argues that picture brides’ agency is immediately usurped after their immigration. Taking Hana, the protagonist of.

(14) Lin 9. Uchida’s Picture Bride as an example, Fuse points out that “Hana’s gender roles . . . as wife, mother, and homemaker are determined by the circumstances of the arranged marriage” (231). Although Hana found her future husband much older than the photographic image and realized that the material comforts of a new life were only illusions, Hana had no choice but to stay with her husband in the United States. As Hana was taught by another picture bride that Japanese wives must sacrifice their happiness for that of their husbands’, the traditional Japanese gender role constantly confined Hana. Fuse claims that Hana in fact has tried to challenge this determined gender role as she falls in love with her husband’s friend, Kiyoshi san. Describing Hana’s affection for Kiyoshi san as “a final attempt to subvert the role of a good wife,” Fuse declares Hana’s failure in terms of her resistance to Kiyoshi san’s sexual advance and her guilty sense toward her husband (232). Su-lin Yu’s interpretation of Uchida’s Picture Bride is similar to Fuse’s argument. According to Yu, because Japanese females under the Gentlemen’s Agreement had no other options to immigrate to North America except being a bride of an immigrant, the picture bride practice in this way strengthens the heterosexual marriage and patriarchal authority. Like Fuse, Yu also analyzes Hana’s extramarital affair with Kiyoshi san. Centering on how picture brides’ bodies are constrained within an economy of racial and gender difference, Yu argues that Hana’s body is a site displaying the tension between her desire and responsibility. Although depicted as a sexual subject, Hana eventually represses her own sexual desire and rejects Kiyoshi san’s advance so as to comply with the Japanese gender norms—being a faithful wife. Both Fuse and Yu state that picture brides assert their agency and subjectivity as they agree/choose to immigrate to America or as they get involved in an extramarital affair. Yet, both of them also reveal how the internalized gender expectations in Japanese patriarchal culture continually haunt picture brides’ life after their immigration. Some scholars from feminist perspectives endeavor to challenge picture brides’ passive.

(15) Lin 10. stereotypes through reconsidering these Issei women’s relationship with Japanese traditional gender norms. Esther Mikyoung Ghymn claims that “Hana in Yoshiko Uchida’s Picture Bride displays . . . [an] appealing form of strength” (84). Instead of interpreting Hana’s retreat from the extramarital affair with Yamaka san as Hana’s surrender to Japanese gender expectations, Ghymn argues that Hana’s retreat is in fact a demonstration of “the emotional strength of a picture bride” (89). To maintain her image as an upright picture bride, even though Hana loves Yamaka san intensely, she rejects his sexual advance and chooses to “[resist] temptation” (Ghymn 91). In this sense, fulfilling Japanese gender expectations could be regarded as a way for picture brides to demonstrate their willpower. Davis in her “Itineraries of Submission: Picture Brides in Recent Japanese American Narratives” complements Ghymn’s argument with more literary examples. According to Davis, picture brides are stereotypically described as “passive, submissive, quiet, gentle and traditional,” yet these Issei women should not be considered victims (38). Analyzing three novels with picture bride theme, Davis argues that picture brides’ submission is not negative but positive because “the Issei women transform required abnegation and self-giving into an instrument of self-affirmation and personal growth” (37). Davis also takes Hana’s retreat from the extramarital affair as an example: . . . Hana’s decision to remain faithful to her husband is a spiritual victory because it is one she makes freely, setting the course for her life. Her triumph lies in her strength to withstand the temptations that will deter her from the choices she has made. She remains decided and strong not only to endure, but to reap the winnings of the life she has chosen. Her determination to help and sustain her husband will bring her peace. (“Itineraries of Submission” 40) According to Davis, Hana proves that she is capable of taking her destiny in her hands as she chooses to immigrate, knows her role as a picture bride, and persists in fulfilling that role. Through redefining the seemingly submissive image of picture brides, Davis claims that.

(16) Lin 11. picture brides are actually active participants in performing Japanese gender roles. Great strides have been made in picture bride studies, but some remain to be done. It is notable that scholars in picture bride studies mostly analyze literary works with either an emphasis on the picture brides’ American belonging or a focus on their gender subjectivity. Also, much attention has been given to picture brides’ predicaments during the internment or picture brides’ extramarital affairs. At the same time, picture brides’ connection to Japan, or more generally their stories on the side of Japan, has been neglected. Shih-wen Liao in her article “Picture Brides: Immigration Process and Self-Identity of Premodern Japanese American Women” expresses concerns about the limitations of existing studies of picture brides.4 Liao indicates that what is lacking in picture bride studies are accounts of picture brides’ “Asian experiences” (66). She particularly includes rich resources in Japanese language, investigating how picture brides’ experiences in Japan continuously affect their lives in North America. For example, she examines the push factors in Japan in the early twentieth century that motivated picture brides to immigrate. Also, she provides explicit information about the education of “good wife, wise mother” in the Meiji period, which strengthened picture brides’ persistence in overcoming the difficulties in the United States. While Liao’s argument about picture brides’ Asian experiences highlights the importance of picture brides’ Japanese past, Eva Rueschmann offers a different way to imagine the connection between picture brides and Japan. In the article “Mediating Worlds/Migrating Identities,” Rueschmann analyzes Hatta’s Picture Bride, arguing that the scene in which Riyo encountered her Japanese female friend Kana’s ghost at the beach presents an intimate tie between the picture bride and her motherland: The beach is a liminal space of the imagination, a symbolic meeting place of death and rebirth, leavetaking and homecoming, dream and reality, and ultimately the 4. Liao’s article misreads Chu-wen Chiu’s Gender and Migration: Asian Brides in Japan and Taiwan, and mistakenly cites Chiu’s words as the words of Lisa Lowe, see Liao 82. Yet this article is still informative as it includes rich resources in Japanese language that are rarely provided or discussed in other scholars’ criticism..

(17) Lin 12. space that connects Hawaii and Japan. . . . Here Kana plays the complex role of mediator between Japanese and Hawaiian culture, a haunting presence through which Riyo may negotiate a new cultural identity in Hawaii while remaining connected to her Japanese heritage. (185) Rueschmann exemplifies the indivisible relationship between picture brides and their country of origin. Moreover, picture brides’ relationship with Japan is not unitary and unchanging. After picture brides immigrated to North America, their experiences in the new world continually reconstructed their relationship with Japan. Indeed, the intricate relationship between picture brides and Japan is, implicitly or explicitly, represented in several picture bride narratives. For example, in The Buddha in the Attic, Otsuka presents picture brides’ Japanese connections through her description of the luggage picture brides brought on their way to the U.S. from a first-person plural perspective, Otsuka lists what picture brides considered as “all the things we [picture brides] would need for our new lives” (9). The long list of picture brides’ luggage suggests these Issei women’s limited imagination about their new lives in the United States as picture brides mostly envisioned their future based on their Japanese customs, religions, and memories. The things in their luggage could be classified into several categories. The first group includes Japanese artifacts in practical applications such as kimonos for different occasions and the stationery for writing letters home. Objects in the second group are associated with their religion such as “tiny brass Buddhas” and “ivory statues of the fox god” (Otsuka 9). While the first-person plural narrator claimed that all these were what they “needed” for their “new” lives, a lot of them are mementos of their Japanese past; among them the most obvious are “dolls we had slept with since we were five,” “smooth black stones from the river that ran behind our houses,” “a lock of hair from a boy we had once touched, and loved, and promised to write, even though we knew we never would,” and “silver mirrors given to us by our mothers,.

(18) Lin 13. whose last words still range in our ears” (Otsuka 9-10). Perhaps the only one thing connected picture brides to the United States in their luggage is the “English phrase book,” which may practically aid picture brides to communicate with Caucasians in the host society. Even this item bears strong witness to the picture brides’ Japanese origin. In fact, only those who newly immigrate from Japan would rely on an “English phrase book” to survive in North America. As Otsuka’s description of picture brides’ luggage presents the importance of picture brides’ Japanese past on the journey to a foreign world, other narratives reveal that many picture brides immigrated in hopes of breaking away from their ignoble Japanese past such as their failed love relationships in Japan. Suffering from predicaments such as the marital imperative or premarital pregnancy, many picture brides believed that becoming picture brides introduced a way out of their uncomfortable situations in Japan. For example in Uchida’s Picture Bride, Hana’s age of twenty-one made finding a proper husband a matter of urgency. Hana revealed that “this lonely man in America was her means of escaping both the village and the encirclement of her family” (Uchida 4). In Obaachan’s Garden, after her failed marriage in Japan, Asayo Murakami also chose to immigrate to Canada as a picture bride. From this viewpoint, Japan seems to be a place where many picture brides wanted to escape from. Yet, their attitudes towards their Japanese past usually changed as they lived in Americas. In Picture Bride, Hana kept her regret and doubt about immigration in mind. At the night before her wedding day, she thought that “[p]erhaps she [Hana] had made a terrible mistake in coming to America. In her anxiety to escape the drabness of Oka Village, perhaps she had leaped too far and severed too many roots. Now like a tree transported beyond its native soil . . . ” (Uchida 26). Similarly, in Obaachan’s Garden, although it seemed that Murakami completely abandoned her Japanese past after her immigration to Canada as she had remained silent about her Japanese past over the past seventy years, she expressed her strong desire of going back to Japan in the documentary. Japan in this sense was no longer a.

(19) Lin 14. place from which Hana and Murakami desired to escape, but the homeland they dreamed to go back to. In this thesis, I am particularly interested in the linkage between picture brides and their country of origin: How and why did picture brides change their attitudes towards their Japanese past? How did picture brides physically or emotionally re/connect themselves with Japan after their immigration to North America? How did picture brides’ memories and life stories enable us to understand the early twentieth century Japan? To answer these questions, I propose to analyze two picture bride narratives: Ohama’s documentary Obaachan’s Garden and Makabe’s biographical book Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada.. Concentrating on picture brides’ re/connections with Japan, this thesis also responds to the paradigm shifts in Asian American studies since the 1990s. Prior to the 1990s, the theoretical and cultural formulations of Asian American studies were governed by identity politics. Insisting on “claiming America,” cultural nationalists grapple with identity politics with the premise that Americas are Asian Americans’ home. For example, Maxine Hong Kingston asserts to omit the hyphen from “Asian-American”: “we ought to leave out the hyphen in ‘Chinese-American,’ because the hyphen gives the word on either side equal weight, as if linking two nouns. . . . Without the hyphen, ‘Chinese’ is an adjective and ‘American’ a noun; a Chinese American is a type of American” (“Cultural Mis-readings” 60). Explicitly, cultural nationalists contest the notion of bilaterality, which they believe would undermine their efforts to earn recognition in North American society. In contrast to this cultural nationalist posture, some scholars argue that the ancestral homeland can never be ignored in the discussion of Asian Americans’ identity. Teasing out the tensions between Asian Americans’ ethnic heritage and their American identity, critics such as Amy Ling point out Asian Americans’ plight in the “between worlds.” “Whether recent immigrants or.

(20) Lin 15. American-born, Chinese in the United States find themselves caught between two worlds. Their facial features proclaim one fact—their Asian ethnicity—but by education, choice, or birth they are American” (Ling 20). Though these two perspectives differ in their attitudes towards Asian Americans’ Asian origins, both coincide on reinforcing the American identity of Asian Americans. However, these Anglo-centric identity politics has been challenged given the impact of globalization, the dramatic geographic and demographic changes of the Asian American population resulting from the Immigration Act of 1965, and the rise of many Asian countries as global economic powers. As more and more Asian Americans, especially the post-1965 immigrants of Asian middle-class backgrounds, maintain their ties with Asia and North America by frequent visits to both places, Asian Americans’ identity formation and their relationship with both sides are needed to be reconfigured. Since the 1990s, critics such as Lisa Lowe, King-kok Cheung, and Shirley Geok-Lin Lim have pinpointed the ideas of “diaspora,” “heterogeneity,” and “cosmopolitan” in Asian American studies. Focusing on the post-1965 Asian Immigration that are impacted by global capitalism and U.S. wars in Asia and the Pacific, critics take overseas students, Asian middle-class intellectuals, refugees and other new subgroups of Asian Americans such as people of Filipino or Thai descent as examples to argue that it is no longer adequate to comprehend Asian Americans within the scope of North American minority discourses. In alliance with this transnational turn of Asian American theories and criticisms, writers of diverse national origins produce works such as The Book of Salt (2003) and The Namesake (2003), in which the protagonists are presented more like cosmopolitans or world citizens rather than the narrowly defined Asian Americans. Remarkably, while critical attention has been shifted from cultural nationalism and American nativity to transnational connections, the transnational dimensions of picture brides’ experiences have not yet been fully investigated. In fact, despite the emergence of many literary and scholarly works concerning the.

(21) Lin 16. post-1965 immigrants, the narratives of picture brides as well as those of other early Asian American immigrants have not been read adequately from transnational or diasporic perspectives. Part of the reason may be the split between the “America-identified” Asian American communities and the Asia-born and bi-or multi-lingual immigrants. As Cheung suggests, “if American-born Asians discriminate against so-called FOBs (Fresh-off-the-Boats), some new immigrants from professional classes also tend to look down on the less privileged old-timers and their mono-lingual children and to distance themselves from community involvement generally” (“Re-viewing” 9). Clearly, the Asian American communities who have endeavored to increase their visibility in North American historical and cultural mainstream since the 1960s seldom see their interest as being in common with that of the post-1965 immigrants who maintain dual or multiple national/ethnic affiliations across the Pacific. Several scholars such as Cheung and Wong express their concerns about the push to adopt a transnational or diasporic perspective in reading Asian American literature. They indicate that transnational or diasporic readings may encourage denationalization that is both inimical to Asian Americans’ panethnic solidarity and to Asian Americans’ political gains from the American civil rights movement. Pre-1965 immigrants’ experiences, due to the language barriers of the first-generation, were usually retold by America-born and -raised second generation and manipulated to locate Asian Americans’ roots in North America. In this case, early immigrants’ ties with their Asian origins are frequently neglected, if not erased. According to Wong, “it seems anything that threatens to undermine the demonstration of the ‘indigenization’ (the ‘becoming American’) of Asian Americans must be scrupulously avoided” (3-4). Cheung also indicates that “this desire to be recognized as American has sometimes been achieved at the expense of Asian affiliation. The obsessive desire to claim America has induced a certain cultural amnesia regarding the country of ancestral origin” (“Re-viewing” 6). In many literary reviews, early immigrants’ connections with their.

(22) Lin 17. countries of origin are presented not only as past, but also as absent. As described by the narrator’s father in Kingston’s China Men, “No stories. No past. No China”—immigrants’ Asian experiences are shrouded so as to “give [Asian Americans] a chance at being real Americans” (14). Moreover, under the force of assimilation discourses, early immigrants’ Asian heritage is often represented as the Old World traditions that should be rejected as Asian Americans “progress” to adapt to the Western modernity. In this sense, the complexities of early immigrants’ transnational experiences tend to be reduced to the binary opposition between the underdeveloped Asia and the civilized North America. In view of the inadequate attention given to the pre-1965 immigrants’ Asian experience, I propose in this thesis to reconfigure early immigrants’ Asian experiences from a transnational perspective. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim is one of the pioneers who underlines the transnational status and diaspora identity of the pre-1965 immigrants. Through analyzing non-English texts such as the poems in Songs of Gold Mountain (1987) and Island (1991) written by early immigrants, Lim problematizes the representations and interpretations of immigrants’ Asian connections in the literature and criticism by second-generation Asian Americans. Providing examples from the poems found on the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station, Lim illustrates the diasporic features in these non-English texts as the detainees call themselves “a member of the Huang clan from Xiancheng,” compare themselves with Ruan Ji,5 and express their patriotism towards “our China” (qtd. in Lim 292). As Lim pays attention to the non-English texts written by first-generation Chinese immigrants, I wonder how the diasporic or transnational features of early immigrants’ experiences are presented in other ethnic groups. In this thesis, I take picture brides’ narratives as examples to explore the intricate relationship between early immigrants and their countries of origin. Even though the two. 5. One of the Chinese representative scholars during the period of the Three Kingdoms (A.D. 220-80)..

(23) Lin 18. texts I examine are presented in English and none of them are produced single-handedly by picture brides, they draw on first-hand picture bride experiences and involve the cooperation of several Issei women. While concentrating on the transnational dimensions of picture brides’ stories, this thesis would not simply read picture brides as figures of diaspora. Instead, I adopt Wong’s suggestion to intertwine “an indigenizing mode” “with a diasporic or a transnational mode” (17). Attending to picture brides’ linkage to Japan while inhabiting Americas, I argue that picture brides maintain their ties with both Japan and North America, and their transnational experiences should be viewed as significant materials in the making of Japanese North American community’s cross-Pacific history. To be more precise, picture brides’ crossings are not unidirectional though their immigration is commonly simplified to be a physical move from Asia to North America. As will be pointed out in this thesis, picture brides’ crossings bridge Japan and North America; their Asian past and connections with Japan impel Japanese North American community to reconsider and reconstruct their relationship with Japan. In this sense, Japan is not a putative continent of origin, but a perceptible space reconstructed in picture bride narratives. As I concentrate on picture brides’ re/connections to Japan, this thesis also attend to the recent development of Asian American studies in Asia and rearticulate Franklin Odo’s question: “How closely, if at all, and in what ways should Asian Americans relate to Asia?” (qtd. in Wang, “Editorial Introduction” 165). According to Sau-ling C. Wong, coming alongside the shifts of critical attention to globalization, transnationalism and diaspora in Asian American studies is also “a relaxation of the distinction between what is Asian American and what is ‘Asian,’ and between Asian American studies and Asian studies” (5). Elaine H. Kim in her foreword to Shirley Lim and Amy Lin’s Reading the Literatures of Asian America also indicates that “[t]he lines between Asian and Asian American, so important to identity formation in earlier times, are increasingly being blurred” (xii)..

(24) Lin 19. However, despite the fact that the permeability between “Asian” and “Asian American” has increased since the 1990s, Chih-Ming Wang points out the still rigid America-centered Asian American imagination in his article “Editorial Introduction: Between Nations and Across the Ocean.” According to Wang, from the debates between denationalization and diaspora to the unceasing theoretical discussions on Asian Americans’ subjectivity, “Asia remains a constitutive outside of the ever-expanding, never conclusive Asian America. In these discussions, whether theoretical or ethnographical, Asia often exists as a singular reference point rather than as complex and concrete materiality” (166). To further illustrate his points, Wang indicates the significance of adopting inter-Asia or transpacific perspectives in Asian American studies and claims Asia’s shifting position from the receiver to the producer of knowledge. While scholars, mostly based on recent Asian immigration, tend to reorient and reconfigure Asian American studies and regard Asia as a geohistorical nexus and interactive plurality in terms of transnational capitalism, Cold War complicities, and the military intervention of the United States in Asia and in the Pacific, I feel more interested in how the studies of Asian immigrants in the early twentieth century may enrich our understanding of Asia. Through analyzing picture brides’ narratives and drawing critical attention to the Japan before and under the process of modernization and globalization in the nineteenth and twentieth century, I attempt to explore how picture brides’ trans-Pacific trajectories may help constitute an imagination of Asia: How was the early twentieth century Japan diversely represented in these Issei women’s memory? How did picture brides, in spite of the geographical distance, make sense of the rapid transformation of their motherland after their immigration? Also, as “Asian Americans are regarded by Asians as their ‘surrogates’ who are lucky enough to have lived in America” (Wang, “Editorial Introduction” 167), how did these female immigrants re/consider their Asian compatriots and their families left in Japan? Attempting to investigate picture brides’ linkage with Japan so as to challenge the.

(25) Lin 20. ossified imagination of early immigrants’ relationship with Asia, I divide this thesis into four chapters. After this introductory chapter, through analyzing Obaachan’s Garden, I explore in Chapter Two the generational differences within Japanese North Americans from the ways in which the Issei and their descendants re/built their relationships with Japan.6 Obaachan’s Garden is a family documentary, directed by the Asian Canadian filmmaker Linda Ohama. At first, Ohama planned to make a family film as a way to celebrate the 100-year-old birthday of her grandmother Asayo Murakami. However, after Ohama started her project, she realized that her grandmother’s past was more complex than she had imagined. Before making Obaachan’s Garden, Asayo’s Canadian family members knew little about Asayo’s past in Japan. All they knew was that Asayo came to Canada in 1924 as a picture bride. Ohama spent five years making this film, telling her grandmother’s stories on screen with interviews, fragments of archival films, and dramatic reenactments. To study the significance of Japan to Japanese Canadians of different generations, I investigate the scattered images of Japan in the film. I argue that Asayo’s life stories revealed and retold in the documentary demonstrate her close relationship with Japan over her seventy years in Canada as well as provide us glimpses of Japan’s national history. Moreover, when Asayo’s Canadian family endeavored to reconstruct Asayo’s hidden Japanese past, they also built their relationship with their ancestral country from the ground up and realized that Japanese Canadian history is not a story beginning at the time when the Issei immigrated and settled in Canada, but started much earlier in Japan. In Chapter Three, I study Makabe’s book Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada, initially published in Japan. In addition to a preface, an introduction to Meiji women and an afterword, the book is divided into five chapters, transcribing five picture brides’ oral histories. Besides the picture brides’ free-flowing narration of their life, detailed geohistorical. 6. “Obaachan” means “grandmother” in Japanese..

(26) Lin 21. features of the picture brides’ prefectural origins are provided in each chapter before the picture bride speaks out for herself. My analysis begins by focusing on how Makabe, as a Shin Issei, records picture brides’ life stories and connects herself to the picture bride history in an attempt to establish her own position in Japanese Canadian community. Moreover, through examining the five Issei women’s oral testimonies together with Makabe’s geohistorical research on their home villages, I argue that Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada successfully demonstrates the intertwined connections between picture bride history, Japanese customs and Japan’s regional developments around the turn of the twentieth century. Overall, this thesis attempts to offer new visions into the studies of Japanese picture brides. By concentrating on picture brides’ connections with their country of origin, I argue that both Obaachan’s Garden and Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada present picture brides as central figures in the making of Japanese and Japanese Canadian history..

(27) Lin 22. Chapter Two Between Family Memory and National History: The Hidden Japanese Past in Linda Ohama’s Obaachan’s Garden. 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..

(28) Lin 23. 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..

(29) Lin 24. 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),.

(30) Lin 25. 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.

(31) Lin 26. 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.

(32) Lin 27. 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.

(33) Lin 28. 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.. Life in Hiroshima An ingenious irony presented in the beginning of Obaachan’s Garden is that even though the violin is a western instrument, playing the violin is a way for Asayo to ease her homesickness. Asayo named the violin her “number one friend.” In a reenactment, she asserted that the violin “made me dream about life back home.” Indeed, Asayo’s violin has a.

(34) Lin 29. special significance in representing Japan in the Meiji era (1868~1912). Asayo was born in Onomichi, Hiroshima in 1989. As Ohama pointed out in the documentary, “when she [Asayo] was born, Japan had just emerged from the feudal age, opening its doors to foreigners and western ideas for the first time.” It was a time for Japan to transform quickly from an isolated feudal society to a modern nation. Intensive westernization was carried out in practically all areas, and drastic social, economic, and cultural transformations ensued. One of the transformations is the Meiji government’s systematic introduction of western music from the 1870s. According to Margaret Mehl’s research in “Going Native, Going Global: The Violin in Modern Japan,” the violin became “one of the most widely disseminated (if not the most widely disseminated) Western instruments in Japan” during the Meiji period. Asayo indicated in the film “[o]ne day my mother brought me a violin and eventually, I followed street musicians around the town and learned many popular songs this way.” The popularity and ready availability of the violin during what Mehl describes as the “violin craze (vaiorin ryūkō)” age in the early-twentieth century Japan was clear in vision. If Asayo’s violin exemplifies Meiji Japan’s westernization in its everyday materiality, Asayo’s childhood education demonstrates one of the measures the Meiji Japan adopted to reform its people’s mentality. Asayo stated that she had “the best lessons” and “studied to be a teacher.” She then provided more details about the Meiji period’s education system: “[b]oys were trained to serve the emperor to make Japan strong, and girls were taught to become good wives, to serve their husbands and produce healthy sons.” Here, what Asayo mentioned is the compulsory education, instituted by the Meiji government from 1872 on, following the model of American and French education system. The education system prescribed new roles for Japanese men and women in preparation for Japan’s development into an imperial power in Asia. In alliance with nationalism and imperialism, both men and women were taught to be loyal subjects of the emperor. Yet, as men were expected to take their knowledge into public.

(35) Lin 30. realms so as to help building the nation, women were expected to learn the skills needed for domestic roles as wives and mothers in the future. Historically, it was the moment when the Japanese prominent gender expectation of “good wife and wise mother” was initiated. According to Andrew Gordon, an eminent scholar of modern Japanese history, “in Tokugawa Japan, women, especially samurai women, had been seen as relatively unteachable and not much in need of formal education. They were not given any public role of importance” (113). Yet, during the Meiji period, even though women’s role was still confined to the home, female education was highlighted. As Gordon points out, “[t]o raise children well in a new era, the mother had to be literate. She had to know something of the world beyond the home. If her sons were to serve the state in the military, the home had to play a quasipublic role as incubator of these soldiers” (113). Regarded as the nurturers of future soldiers, Japanese women of the Meiji era were expected to be well-educated, and in a certain degree, Japanese female’s status had been promoted. Asayo’s brief introduction about her childhood offers clues to how she was cultivated by the sociocultural formation of the Meiji era. Precisely, Asayo’s immigration in 1924 should also be viewed as a part of the modernization process of Japan. Alongside the dramatic domestic transformations through the Meiji Restoration, Japan speedily shifted from a marginalized feudal country to a global imperial power and gained control over Korea and Taiwan around the turn of the twentieth century. Being a model modernizer in the non-Western world, Japan altered its relationship with the world. It became a distinguished participant of the international trade, importing and exporting both products and people to other countries. Picture brides as such could be understood as exemplary Japanese figures that joined the global flows of capitalism and endeavored to make themselves an integral part of the global system during the time of Japanese modernization..

(36) Lin 31. Early Immigration Life As suggested in the documentary, Asayo still followed several Japanese customs after immigrating to Canada. For example, Asayo and her family had Japanese-style meals. The family made pickled radishes (takuwan), sticky rice cake (mochi) and the Japanese alcoholic drink (sake). Also, a reenactment portrays that young Obaachan and her husband followed the tradition of Japanese bath, bathing in the wooden tub and scrubbing their backs mutually. Furthermore, Asayo claimed in a talking head that “I liked flowers the best. I picked them and placed them on the altar with my prayers. Flowers for the spirits.” Asayo’s fascination with flowers in Canada was thus closely connected with her Buddhist religion to offer flowers on the altar in honor of Buddha and the spirits of ancestors. Indeed, Asayo’s immigration did not diminish her affiliation with her homeland; it even strengthened the affiliation. For instance, Asayo kept writing letters home even during the wartime and had traveled back to Japan several times. Besides, the fact that a newcomer was introduced into the Japanese Canadian community in terms of his/her prefectural hometown made Japanese immigrants enter the new world with the label of their origin. Yasu, one of Asayo’s friends in Steveston, described her first impression about Asayo. “I remember that day when I first heard your name. That woman from Onomichi they said. Just like that writer, Fumiko Hayashi.” Not surprisingly, Alice Yun Chai in her “Picture Brides: Feminist Analysis of Life Histories of Hawai’i’s Early Immigrant Women from Japan, Okinawa, and Korea” indicates how the picture brides’ prefectural origin affects their interpersonal relationships in the alien land. According to Chai, “Japanese and Okinawan women identified more closely with other women from the same home villages, cities, or towns for ancestral and religious ties, fellowship, mutual aid, and informal networks” (131). The intimacy between individuals in the Japanese immigrant community is profoundly determined by their Japanese past. Here, a few words will be added to the celebrity writer from Onomichi Yasu called to.