From “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
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we will begin with an excerpt from Picture Bride, a novel about a Japanese daughter who breaks away from her family and traditional values. This daughter’s passage from childhood to adulthood involves leaving her native land. This story will expose students to Japanese culture and traditions, including the custom of arranged marriages. Further, students will examine the roles of daughters and women in Japanese culture, as depicted in the first chapter of the novel.
Students will read background information about mail order brides to gain a historical perspective on the subject. This information will be taken from a teacher resource kit, “The Shadow of Hate: A History of Intolerance in America,” developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. This resource kit includes a magazine, “Us and Them,” which provides an article about mail order brides and the prison camps that Japanese Americans were subjected to during and after WWII.
Picture Bride, by Yoshiko Uchida, opens with Hana Omiya standing at the rail of a ship, taking her away from her native country, Japan, to America, where she will marry a man she has never met. The turbulence in the opening scene bespeaks Hana’s uncertainty about her decision to leave her home and the difficulty in leaving her childhood behind: “Hana Omiya stood at the railing of the small ship that shuddered toward America in a turbulent November sea....Her body seemed leaden and lifeless, as though it were simply the vehicle transporting her soul to a strange new life, and she longed with childlike intensity to be home again in Oka Village.”14
Hana and Her Sisters: Tradition vs. Modern Ideas
The conflict between Japanese tradition and modern ideas is developed through the depiction of Hana and her sisters. Hana is the youngest of four sisters; at twenty-one she is the only one who is yet unmarried. At the age of twenty-one, the matter of “finding a proper husband for her had taken on an urgency that produced an embarrassing secretive air over the entire matter.”15 Students will discuss the differences between current marriage customs in their own cultures and the custom of arranged marriages in Japanese culture. They will discuss the reasons people marry and have marriedand explore the options of marrying or not that women have today. Is there stigma attached today to unmarried women? What pressures do women face in our society to marry?
Certainly the pressure for Hana to follow tradition and marry is great; the options open to women are few. We learn that her mother objected to Hana’s desire to go to Tokyo to seek employment as a teacher, and so Hana finds for herself another option. Hana’s other option comes by way of a conversation she overhears between her mother and an uncle discussing a Japanese merchant in America, who needs a wife. Overhearing the conversation, and having heard about “picture brides who went (to America) with nothing more than an exchange of photographs to bind them to a strange man,”16 a seed of possibility is planted in Hana’s mind. She might not realize her dream of traveling to Tokyo and teaching, but she would be able to live a completely different life in a new and exciting land.
Although Hana’s mother objects to the idea of Hana going to America to marry, the uncle and the men in the family persuade her otherwise, and preparations begin, exemplifying the patriarchal tradition in Japanese society. Once an agreement to the marriage is almost settled, the future husband begins writing letters to Hana. None of the letters reveal anything personal about him; there is no intimacy in them. According to Japanese tradition it would be improper for a man to “bare his intimate thoughts” and Hana accepts that; still she “read and re-read Taro’s letter, trying to find the real man somewhere in the sparse unbending prose.”17
While Hana seeks to find the “real man” in her letters and in the snapshot she has of him, her sisters and their husbands are eager to see her go. Hana thinks to herself that her sister’s husband will be “pleased to be rid of her...the spirited younger sister who stirred up his placid life with what he considered radical ideas about life and the role of women.”18 Students will use this statement and find evidence from the story to discuss and analyze the differences between Hana and her sisters, using graphic organizers. An interesting topic for discussion might evolve from asking students whether they think either of Hana’s sisters could be jealous of Hana’s opportunity, and requiring them to support their opinions with information from the text.
Predicting Hana’s Future
Finally, through sea-sickness and homesickness, Hana reaches America, and nothing about the event meets her expectations. She is sent to an immigration building on Angel Island, where she is examined for diseases: “It was bewildering, degrading beginning, and Hana was sick with anxiety, wondering if she would ever be released.”19 When she finally is released and meets Taro Takeda, he does not even resemble the man in the snapshot she had been given. It seems that Hana’s dreams of a better life are dashed by the reality she faces.
In the chapter’s closing paragraph, Hana emotionally makes the break with the home she has left and there is optimism in her words, “I am in America now.”20 But the Japanese culture she has left behind, is there too; according to custom she covers her mouth while she laughs, and she does not dare sit too close to Taro Takeda. Hana has begun her journey into her future, while retaining what she needs from her past.
As a final writing activity for this story, students will write an essay predicting what Hana’s life will be like in America. They will ponder such questions as, “Did she or did she not make the right decision to marry Taro? Was her decision to come to America one that she will regret? Or, will she be happy with her decision?” They will be required to cite evidence from the story to support their predictions.
