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The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 15 (2004)

Japanese Picture Marriage and the Imageof Immigrant Womenin Early Twentieth-Century California
Kei TANAKA*

INTRODUCTION
Picture marriage (shashin kekkon) was a common practice among
Japanese immigrants in Hawaii and the continental United States in theearly twentieth century. Set up by a “go-between,” usually a relative or
acquaintance of the immigrant man, marriage between a man in America
and a woman in Japan was agreed upon after the couple—separated by
the Paciﬁc Ocean—exchanged portraits and information on their backgrounds.1 Immigrants at that time were made up mostly of single men
who, in the absence of wives, visited prostitutes and gambled theirmoney away. Working to reform the demoralized immigrant Japanesesociety, leaders of the Japanese community in America were convincedthat marriage would assist their agenda. Moral reform was vital, leaders
were convinced, to alleviating conditions that were the major cause ofanti-Japanese sentiment in American society.2 This article focuses particularly on the picture-marriage practice in California, where Japaneseimmigration was mostly concentrated.
Picture marriage became popular among Japanese immigrants during
the ﬁrst two decades of the twentieth century, when Japanese men, hoping to form a class of independent farmers and producers, developed the
Copyright © 2004 Kei Tanaka. All rights reserved. This work may be used, with this noticeincluded, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.
*Lecturer, Niigata Women’s College

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notion of establishing a permanent settlement in California. There wereseveral practical reasons why this was so. First of all, Japanese immigrants were not permitted to take white American wives. Indeed, there
were state laws, such as the anti-miscegenation law of California in 1907,
which prohibited interracial marriages between the Japanese and Caucasians. Second, a trip back to Japan solely for the purpose of marriage
cost immigrants enormous sums of money, and placed them in dangerof being drafted for military service.3 During the peak period between
1908 and 1920 until the abolition of picture marriage by the Japanese
government, it is estimated that over 10,000 picture brides entered theUnited States.4 Although they constituted only about one quarter of theimmigrant female population, in a symbolic sense, picture brides cameto represent the entire population of Japanese immigrant women.
Scholars of Japanese-American history in both Japan and the UnitedStates view picture marriage in more than one light. There were its unconventional nature and the problems associated with it. Yet at the sametime this particular sort of marriage was viewed as an extended form of
traditional Japanese proxy marriage that is placed in opposition to Occidental romantic love.5 The studies stress the following points: First, mostof the picture-marriage couples had actually met each other for the ﬁrst
time upon the bride’s arrival at the port of San Francisco. Second, thegrooms, having grown old as bachelors in the United States after many
years, often used every means to concoct an idealized self-image in theirphotographs; they sent romanticized photos along with letters that spokeof ﬁctitious success in America, all in order to attract potential brides inJapan. Third, inevitably many brides were keenly disappointed when
they ﬁnally met their real husbands and realized that the fancy American
life they had imagined was actually shabby and laborious. Such disillusionment often led to disruption of the family, including divorce, adultery, and desertion by wives. For disillusioned women who wished to
avoid such remedies, the only other choice was to resign themselves to
the Japanese ideal of the dutiful wife. This meant being a subservient
wife, which in turn reinforced existing stereotypes of Asian women as
passive and submissive. The studies conventionally interpret such disastrous consequences as the responsibility of the Japanese men who
coaxed women into picture marriage by deceit.6
In early twentieth-century Japanese communities in California, however, contemporary Japanese leaders believed that the problems resided
rather in the immigrant women, especially the ambition and vanity that

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the picture brides’ longing for a luxurious life in the United States bymarriage indicated. Numerous educational and moral reform activities
were introduced by Japanese organizations in both California and Japan,
including the Japanese YWCA and Rikko Jogakko (Rikko women’s
school), in order to train these women to be “decent” housewives.
Michiko Kawai, chief secretary of the YWCA in Tokyo, visited theJapanese communities across the Paciﬁc in April of 1915 to inspect theJapanese households in the United States. Having done so, she criticized
the picture brides she had seen as being “bold, reckless, careless, or rashfor crossing the great ocean for America, naively relying on the photographs and letters without investigating character and personal background of the prospective husband.”7 Labeled as “vain women”(kyoeishin no tsuyoi onna), picture brides were often criticized as opportunists whose single priority was their own material comfort. Leaders,reformers, and spokesmen for the Japanese communities, including theJapanese press, Japanese associations, and Christian church organizations accused them of being greedy and ambitious. “Vanity” (kyoeishin),it was held, was speciﬁcally a female trait that would destroy marriage
and family, and was thus subversive of the proscribed gender roles inJapanese communities.8
This article examines the process through which the concept of the“vain woman” became the dominant perception of immigrant Japanesewomen during the period of Japanese permanent settlement in California. It examines how picture brides, deﬁned as “vain women,” wereperceived as threats to the immigrant community’s well-being. Since thediscourse of vanity was particularly associated with women who hademigrated through picture marriage, this article examines the emergenceof the “vain woman” within the context of the development of photography and its use for marriage arrangement among the populace of Japanin its initial phase of modernization. Photography, it will be seen, became
a powerful instrument for deﬁning a gender representation and ideology of immigrant Japanese women.9
Self-portrait, as social scientists explain, involves the subject’s active
engagement in creating an idealized self-image according to current
social trends.10 Picture marriage, which involved participants’ romantic
imaginations, was distinctively a product of capitalism and consumerism, involving the commodiﬁcation of idealized images of Meiji
Japanese women and men through the vehicle of modern photography.
For many ordinary Japanese women, picture marriage meat the ultimate

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in modern, romantic marriage practice. The powerful appeal and usefulness of picture marriage, as well as its risks and susceptibility to
conﬂicting evaluations, will be examined in this paper through the intertwined development of modern marriage practices and the photographyindustry during the Meiji era.
I

EMERGENCE OF MODERN MARRIAGE IN MEIJI JAPANAs part of its modernization policies, the Meiji government (1868–1912) abolished the clan system and announced the freedom of marriage.
These reforms allowed Japanese people to freely select spouses regardless of social status. Western notions of romantic love and gender relations were newly introduced and prevailed especially among the upperclass and the rising urban middle class (shin chusan kaikyu). Along withthis modern phenomenon, external physical beauty in pursuit of aromance became a desirable quality, particularly for women.11
Meanwhile, under the Civil Code of 1898, the government legallydeﬁned arranged marriages and the patriarchal household system (ie),which had been practiced by the upper-class warrior clans, the nobility,
and merchants alike during feudalism, as the authentic and traditional
marriage and family system. In short, gender ideology in modernizing
Japan was a complicated blend of a marriage institution that regarded
gender relations as a family affair, and western gender relations that emphasized romance and individuality.12
Because of the growth of industry, cities and transportation, and theoccupational mobility among the populace resulting from the abolitionof the clan system, marriages increasingly came to be arranged between
individuals from separate communities and were entrusted to go-betweens rather than being arranged directly between families in the samecommunity. As an outgrowth of the Meiji aspiration for success througheducation and the establishment of businesses (risshin shusse), the criteria for selecting a spouse changed from the familiarity derived from acommon social origin to issues of status and position. Women’s external beauty, which had been the requisite quality for courtesans during
the age of feudalism, became a desirable quality also for ordinary womenand thereby for wives.13 However, while the glory of romantic love was
becoming a social trend, the qualities and roles of a “dutiful wife andintelligent mother” (ryosai kenbo) were being promoted as the national
ideal of womanhood. The concept of ryosai kenbo embodied and pro-

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moted shushin, the system of Japanese civic moral lessons derived from
Confucianism, which taught ﬁlial piety, loyalty to the emperor and nation, and female submission to the male. Ryosai kenbo ideology was
promoted in women’s higher education by the Japanese government forthe purpose of supporting the nation’s imperialism and expansionism
through training women to become subservient and efﬁcient housewives
as well as mothers who would raise loyal and patriotic citizens.14
Thus, despite the societal forces encouraging female beauty as an
ideal, women’s external beauty became a target of criticism by national
spokesmen. The anti-beauty discourse attacked good-looking women forbeing boastful of their physical beauty, lacking in self-discipline, andneglecting the duty of females to serve their parents and husband. To be
beautiful, or to try to attain physical beauty, was considered to be anundesirable female trait in the context of ryosai kenbo ideology.15 Whatemerged from this discourse was a representation of the “vain woman,”a woman who managed to make a brilliant marriage by taking advantage of her beauty. As female higher education developed, the deﬁnitionof the “vain woman” extended to include women who were middle-class,educated, and seen as over-conﬁdent regarding their abilities as well as
their beauty.
II

THE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND ITS GENDERED IMPLICATIONS

The development of photography during the Meiji era played a keyrole in effecting the changes that occurred in women’s social status, particularly in regard to the institution of marriage. The photography trade
was tied up with the rise of publishing companies and developed primarily through commodifying the image of certain types of women—
popular courtesans, geisha, and actresses.16 By the beginning of thetwentieth century, images of geisha and actresses were mass-produced
and made into postcards, newspaper advertisements and photogravuresfor beauty contests held by men’s magazines that had gained major readership among urban middle-class men (Fig. 1).17 While these images ofprofessional women targeted male consumers, women’s magazines thatserved ordinary female consumers also came into existence. By the beginning of the twentieth century, these magazines began to feature photogravures of imperial, noble, and upper-class women, including wives
and daughters of entrepreneurs and university professors. Thus, thecommodiﬁcation of beauty fostered by the intertwined growth of theKei Tanaka(p115) 6/2 04.7.18 0:06 PM ページ 120

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Figure 1. Picture postcard of a young geisha. Pola
Cultural Institute, ed., Bakumatsu Ishin Meiji·Taisho
Bijincho (Photo-album of beauties in the last Tokugawa,
Meiji and Taisho eras) (Tokyo: Shinjinbutsu Ohraisha,2003), 78.

publishing and photography industries eventually came to include
women of all social classes and the ryosai kenbo ideal.18
Among these images of model Meiji women, catalogues featuring pictures of daughters of upper-class families in women’s magazines appeared in the decade between 1910 and 1920.19 Interestingly, the familiesof these girls used women’s magazines to display their daughters’ pic-Kei Tanaka(p115) 6/2 04.7.18 0:06 PM ページ 121

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tures in order to advertise for a marriage arrangement with other members of the upper class. Photography had by then become a useful tool
in arranging marriages, as “the ﬁrst step in marriage talks, the sole clue
to the personality and character of the future spouses.”20 As go-betweens
became an accepted way of arranging a marriage, photography came toserve both the institution of proxy marriage and the development ofexogamy as the nation developed a modern economy. The subjects inthe magazines conﬁdently and joyfully appeared in the catalogues as themost fashionable, elegant, upper-class young ladies, dressed in highquality kimonos with hair tied up in western-style pompadours orchignons.
Because the custom of self-portraiture for women began with courtesans and geisha, it was thought indecent and vulgar of the publishers topresent the images of upper-class women in the magazines. Conversely,
women were also perceived to be shameful and degraded for participating in this commodiﬁcation of their self-images. For example, in the ﬁrst
nation-wide beauty contest for upper-class women that used self-portraits, which was held in 1907 and sponsored by a major Japanese newspaper company, the seventeen-year-old winner was expelled from school(Fig. 2).21 Despite these arguments and criticisms, however, upper-classwomen increasingly participated in the creation of a particular selfimage. Some women posed with a sidelong glance, or seated themselves
diagonally to the camera, or held a ﬂower, all of these affectations in imitation of the style of female beauty originally used by professional geisha
and actresses.22
As the level of higher education and literacy rose among young
women, readers from lower middle- and middle-class households also
increasingly sent in their portraits to women’s magazines in order to participate in beauty picture contests. By the second decade of the twentieth century, teenage readers made friends through the “reader’s sections”
and exchanged photographs.23 By 1915, female students had become themajor customers, and the photographers visited women’s high schools
every day to take orders from students. In order to improve business,
photographers started to ﬁnish the pictures by retouching them, which
pleased their female customers as they sought to create an objectiﬁed
self image.24
As a powerful visual media, photography in Japan created idealized
female images by involving women of different social status. The commodiﬁcation of women’s images developed by readers’ use of them forKei Tanaka(p115) 6/2 04.7.18 0:06 PM ページ 122

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Figure 2. Portrait of Hiroko Suyehiro, the ﬁrst prize winner. Pola Cultural Institute, ed., Bakumatsu·Meiji Bijincho(Photo-album of beauties in the last Tokugawa and Meiji
eras) (Tokyo: Shinjinbutsu Ohraisha, 2002), 106.

various forms of advertisements and self-promotion all aimed at making
marriage arrangements and new same-sex friendships. Japanese women
perceived photography as a way to re-create themselves according to amore desirable esthetic. Consequently, they took great pains with theirphotographs and enjoyed displaying as well as exchanging the images
in public.

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III

123

PICTURE MARRIAGE AND ITS GENDERED IMPLICATIONS

Picture marriage in Japan grew out of parallel and intersecting developments in the photography and publishing industries, and changes in
traditional marriage practices which were stimulated by Japan’s economic modernization. How the picture marriage system came to be used
speciﬁcally for the purpose of emigration to the United States will now
be the focus of discussion.
Picture brides’ personal backgrounds were varied: While most weredaughters of farmers or ﬁshermen, some picture brides came from lower
middle- and middle-class family backgrounds—daughters of Christianministers, teachers, shop owners, and entrepreneurs, for example. As fortheir educational background, almost all picture brides had ﬁnished eight
years of compulsory education; many of them had gone to a ﬁnishingschool as well. Some also had high school and college educations, andeven had careers, for example in teaching and nursing.
One of the strong motivations for marriage and immigration among
picture brides was a yearning for what was, unfortunately for them, anover-idealized and romanticized life in a modern, western country. Thiswas particularly the case among the lower middle and middle classes in
the cities, the population among which exogamy was most prevalent.25
Contemporary Japanese-language papers and short novels published in
the immigrant communities reveal that women were often more enthusiastic than their parents for arranging their picture marriages.26
The power of photography to construct a new self-image and the appeal of romanticized western modernity are evident in Figure 3, whichshows a 25-year-old bride who arrived in the United States in 1918 from
Fukushima prefecture.27 In Japan, the bride stayed home and helped
around the house after having completed her higher education. In thephoto shown, she is neatly dressed, wearing an expensive kimono painted in a beautiful yet modest pattern. She is wearing a high pompadour,a hairstyle she assumed to be still popular in the west, but which was
actually outmoded there. Her hands rest in her lap, where she holds a
closed fan. She avoids facing squarely front and giving a bold, direct
look; instead, she turns her body diagonally and looks softly at the camera. In the photo in question, the bride poses herself in the image of amodern Japanese lady, with a touch of western elements. She appears
graceful, beautiful, groomed, and well-mannered. Also evident in Figure
3 is that props and backgrounds were effectively used to create anKei Tanaka(p115) 6/2 04.7.18 0:06 PM ページ 124

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Figure 3. Portrait of a picture bride. File 24–24, Box
18589, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, National Archives and Record Administration-Paciﬁc Region. San Bruno, California.

atmosphere that was a mix of the traditional and modern, the essence ofJapanese modernization. A western room with classical furniture, curtains, and a carpet is often chosen as the background. Even if the scene
symbolizes high-class tradition, such as the Japanese garden or ikebana(ﬂower arrangement), some element of western high culture is present,such as a ﬂower stand, a chair, or a sofa.
Regional and class differences can be detected in the earlier period of
picture bride photographs. Middle-class subjects appear relaxed, apparently used to having their portraits taken. This attitude was commonly
observed among the brides who had been students, had stayed at home,or had pursued a career, even if they were from rural Japan. Presumably,
these women had more opportunities to visit cities, come in contact with

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Figure 4. Portrait of a picture bride. File 10–16, Box 10448,
Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
National Archives and Record Administration-Paciﬁc Region. San Bruno, California.

the latest in culture such as women’s magazines, and learn about the idealized modern Japanese womanhood.
The portraits of brides from rural farms appear different from those of
middle-class brides. Although in the early years some pictures weretaken outside of the house, most of these women visited a studio to havea portrait taken. They usually wore a plain or patterned, wrinkled cotton
kimono, as in the 1913 photo shown in Figure 4, and even those who
were dressed up in their best appeared unsophisticated and rustic.28
Looking rustic in those days meant, for example, wearing an old-fashioned, disheveled Japanese coiffure, and wearing no make-up. The

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Figure 5. Portrait of a picture bride. File
7–4, Box 14880, Records of the Immigration
and Naturalization Service, National Archives and Record Administration-Paciﬁc
Region. San Bruno, California.

brides in these photographs commonly look stiff and serious, and there
was no observable touching-up in the photographs, suggesting that farm
women were unfamiliar with or unaccustomed to the culture of photography. Also, these women could likely not afford the extra cost for
retouching portraits.
Nonetheless, by the peak period of picture marriages, farm women
also attempted to present themselves as modern Japanese women. For
example, the peasant woman from Shiga prefecture (Fig. 5) who arrived
in California in 1915 looks no less reﬁned than her middle-class counterparts, with the same aura of a well-educated, cultured young woman.29
This aura characterizes even the photos of illiterate working-class women who presumably were the least inﬂuenced by women’s magazines.
This suggests that by the time the practice of picture marriages was at

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its peak, more and more rural farming-class women had become accustomed to having their photographs taken and had become active in thecreation of an objectiﬁed self-image.
An article on Japanese photography studios in the immigrant community in San Francisco that ran in a 1914 issue of Nichibei Shinbun, orJapanese American Daily News, a major Japanese-language newspaper
in Northern California, underscores the image-making process that lay
at the heart of picture marriages:
Upon arriving at the studio, a customer is usually not bold enough to tell thephotographer that he came for a portrait for picture-marriage arrangement.
Instead, he shyly requests the photographer to make him look a bit splendid.
. . . [T]he photographer forges the image. When it comes to forging an image,[by the way,] women generally appear too beautiful in the photograph to betrue. That is the result of a photographer capturing a woman’s natural desire
to win a man’s heart with her own beauty.30

The article contains an observation on the power of photography to create an image, demonstrating that not only the photographers but also thecustomers—the objects of the camera’s gaze—were active collaboratorsin this image-making. An immigrant man has a picture taken portraying
him as a “splendid,” successful gentlemen wearing a western-style suit;a woman in Japan is portrayed as a “beautiful” woman, both portrayalsin accordance with contemporary Japanese gender ideals. The photographs were even retouched, like a painting, to make their images closer to a visual code of beauty.
IV

THE “VAIN WOMAN” IN THE IMMIGRANT JAPANESE COMMUNITY

As mentioned in the introduction, leaders and spokesmen for theJapanese communities, such as the Japanese press, Japanese associations, and Christian church organizations, usually blamed the picture
bride when there was trouble in a marriage. They blamed her for disregarding her place as a wife, and, when it happened, for committing adultery and eloping with her lover. The Japanese reformists actuallyencouraged women to look groomed, elegant, and independent in orderto demonstrate their assimilation. Unfortunately for these women, thereformists then targeted these same elements as proof of vanity.
In Japanese immigrant communities, the establishment of patriarchal
gender relations and “decent” families was perceived to be the key to thedevelopment of communities and to improving the reputation of

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Japanese people in American society. Japanese leaders and reformers,
therefore, encouraged picture-marriage couples to assimilate to white
middle-class customs, particularly in terms of gender. This initiative wasmeant to dispel anti-Japanese sentiment among their American neighbors, who had used picture marriages as proof of the savagery and primitive nature of Asian marriage customs.
Throughout the emigration and settlement process, picture brides werestrictly directed by the Japanese associations and church organizations
to pay special attention to clothing, accessories, hair, make-up, and manners. The intention was that they would be able to present themselves ascivilized, sophisticated, respectful housewives.31 Newly arrived brides
were taken by their husbands to clothing shops where they were outﬁtted with western-style dress-suits, corsets, hats, stockings, shoes, andgloves.32 Husbands were directed to treat their wives respectfully in public, for example, by walking down the street side-by-side, in the mannerof an American couple, and by not putting their wives to work outside
the home.33 The Japanese leaders and reformers thus tried to incorporate
some aspects of the gender doctrines of middle-class whites into immigrant Japanese gender relationships, mostly for the purpose of demonstrating a positive racial image to the eyes of Americans.34
The goal of Americanization, however, was not to create an equal,
respectful partnership between husband and wife. The permanent settlement of Japanese immigrants that came along with marriage required
them to establish a solid family foundation, and it was considered to be
the woman’s duty to uphold this foundation. The Japanese leaders andreformers instructed picture brides to maintain the female virtues of theryosai kenbo, which included subservience to their husbands. The
Japanese leaders’ major worry was that picture brides would become
vain and boastful if they were overly liberated and treated respectfully
like American middle-class women.35 Editorials and articles in theJapanese immigrant press criticized picture brides who insisted on equaland respectful treatment from men, or who neglected Japanese female
virtues to pursue individual freedom, as selﬁsh, vain, and over-Americanized.36
In reality, establishing families within their newly structured communities entailed tremendous challenges and sometimes disruptions forJapanese immigrants in California. For most picture brides, whether settled in rural areas or cities, life in America became an endless cycle ofworking to help their husbands eke out a living in a harsh environment.

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Those brides who married farmers and laborers and settled in rural areas
in California had to work in the ﬁelds and adjust to life in primitive agricultural settings, while those who settled in urban areas often worked as
domestic servants for American families or as waitresses in Japaneserestaurants.37
Kyuin Okina, a writer for Nichibei Shinbun, explains that the mosttragic cases of family disruption typically occurred when Japanese wives
living in the rough conditions of the American countryside entered into
adulterous liaisons with “city slickers,” “good-looking, ﬂattering, andsmart” Japanese men who had temporarily taken up laboring work on
the local farms. Some instances of adultery also occurred between
women and the farm leaders under whom their husbands worked aslaborers, since the leaders had the most access to appealing aspects of“civilization and culture,” such as living in desirable middle-class houses. This illuminates how women who strongly desired an idealized version of masculinity could come to pair up with modernized, sophisticatedmen who carried the image of risshin shusse. It was part of what they
had envisioned before coming to the United States. Okina’s perception
is that these desertion cases were inevitable within such an environment.38
Articles reporting adulteries and notices in which husbands searched
for their missing wives, which included photographs of missing lovers,
appeared in Japanese-language newspapers every day during the peak
period of picture marriage. These incidents were usually ﬁrst reported to
the local Japanese association by the deserted husband; the message wasthen circulated in the newspapers.39 The publication of articles andinquiries on deserting lovers was, as the historian Yuji Ichioka concludes, “a means of social control.”40 These articles were, in general,more critical of the wives than of their lovers, which suggests that theJapanese female ideal of ryosai kenbo was redeﬁned and observed as thenorm.41 The newspapers often humorously embellished and distorted thestories in order to increase readership, which suggests that the Japanesepress not only prescribed the “right” gender role ideology for theJapanese immigrants but also commodiﬁed the stories and images ofadultery for popular consumption.
The typical outline of these stories involved a “vain” picture bride disliking an unreﬁned farm labor husband, and running off with a handsome, sophisticated man. The picture bride was often depicted in thearticles as a “vain woman” who would take advantage of marriage with

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KEI TANAKAa hard-working, sincere Japanese farmer simply to indulge her vanity.
On March 2, 1911, an issue of the Shin Sekai Shinbun (the Japanese
Daily New World) reported that a picture bride, H. I., who hated her hardworking but “rustic” husband, ran off with H. M., a good friend of her
husband. The article reported that H. I. was attracted to H. M.’s “handsome face, street-wise manner, and sophisticated attitude.”42
Different articles in the Nichibei Shinbun in 1913 reported on I. S., apicture bride from Kagoshima prefecture who deserted her husband soonafter her arrival. The article describes her husband as a “simple, sincere
farmer” living in Southern California. Meanwhile, I. S. is described as“a twenty-year-old, rather sophisticated beauty at the peak of her womanhood.” On top of that, “she had been a primary school teacher back in
her hometown” and was known as a “vain, frivolous, modern woman.”
The articles conclude that “I. S. was planning to desert her husband even
before her arrival,” and denounce as “frivolous” her reasons for coming
to America. The July 5, 1913, issue of the Shin Sekai Shinbun reported
another adultery story about a twenty-year old picture bride from
Yamaguchi prefecture, who came to “onna-hideri-no Amerika (aJapanese community in America that lacks women) with the ambitionof abusing her freedom in the country where money and liberty are abundant.” The bride started to turn a cold shoulder to her husband as soon
as they moved to a country farm after their honeymoon in San Francisco.
The article proposes that her attitude possibly derived from her desire toabuse the “freedom of women’s rights.”43
The well-educated picture bride leaving her unreﬁned husband for amodernized lover was also depicted in short stories read among theJapanese immigrants. Kyuin Okina’s short story titled “Kumogakure”(Vanishing), printed in 1912 in the Taihoku Nippo (the Great Northern
Daily News), the major Japanese newspaper of Seattle, is about an educated, reﬁned, upper middle-class bride from Tokyo. The bride, named
Okishi, is married to a Japanese laborer in the United States, and dreamsof living in the “civilized country of America with a liberated man.” A
romantic, egalitarian relationship with a modernized man is what she
envisioned for a “new woman’s lifestyle,” having seen and admired “astylish western woman swaggering along side-by-side with a man” in apark when she was still in Japan. However, her husband Hamada is not
at all modernized, even though he has lived in the United States for ten
years. Okishi is disappointed that he “has not even graduated from primary school, does not enjoy reading books, and cannot even read news-

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papers” but only works diligently to save money. Okishi, disillusioned
at the contrast between her vision and the reality, elopes with Nakayama,
an educated, young Japanese man whom she met at church.
Okina, by portraying Okishi as representative of her kind, describes
the educated modernized picture brides as desperate and miserable
women, who agonize over their farfetched dreams. While waiting for
Nakayama in the park, Okishi is pensive: “There is a young white couple, liberated and free, being playful and ﬂirting with each other—which
is something I could never even dream about if I were in Japan. Will I
ever attain such a life? If I keep living the way I do now, I would probably never, ever, attain such things as a civilized lifestyle or a liberated
man.” Her desire for the far-reaching white civilization is paralleled byher observation of some white women’s bodies, to which she compares
herself. Wearing a western dress and a hat, on her way to the park where
she is meeting Nakayama, Okishi “[sees] several American ladies—some [are] elaborately dressed, some [have] a good physique, and stillothers [have] beautiful complexions. Each time she encounter[s] theseladies, feeling as if she [is] disqualiﬁed as woman, Okishi curse[s] herself for being a Jap.” As she arrives at the park, seeing three white girls
playing there, Okishi “looks at her hands, which she used to ﬁnd white,
but now seem so yellow.” The picture bride portrayed by Okina is aiming to achieve civilization by dressing like westerners; however, despite
her efforts, she feels frustrated and deprived of self-esteem as she
becomes aware that the civilization is race-speciﬁc. Okishi, representing the intelligent, modernized Japanese woman, recognizes that both
her material body and her idealized hopes for marriage fail to provide
the beauty, modernity, or civilization she longs for, even in America.44
In contrast to the contemporary writer Okina’s sympathetic and compassionate delineation of the picture bride, community newspapers useda sarcastic and mocking tone, describing these brides as selﬁsh and overconﬁdent. A series of articles that appeared in 1912 in the Shin Sekai
Shinbun reported the elopement of T. T., a “modern and modish woman,”with tailor shop owner, Y. She is described as being “stylish,” “[u]nlike
a ﬁsherman’s daughter,” and “engrossed in grooming herself, since thedate of her arrival, doing her face and hair.”45 The report clearly portrays
T. T. as a “vain woman” ambitious to become westernized, and criticizes
her arrogance in forgetting her lowly origin. One article in the series displays photographs of T. T. and Y. (Fig. 6), showing a beautiful, reﬁned,
westernized lady wearing a white dress with ﬂowers at her bust, her left

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Figure 6. Photographs of T. T. and Y.
Shin Sekai Shinbun (the Japanese Daily
New World ) (13 November 1912).

hand lightly touching her white cheek. Her hair is parted in the centerand tied gently in the back. Y. also looks handsome and modern, wearing a suit, a high-collared shirt and tie, with nicely trimmed hair and mustache—the image of a supremely modern gentleman who has achieved
risshin shusse.46 The photographs support the article that describes T. T.;that is, instead of fulﬁlling her role as a dutiful wife, she is driven bycrass materialism and desire to run off with Y., a man who appears tohave become successfully modernized.
Harsh criticism of “vain” picture brides was also repeated in the writings of Japanese Christian organizations which promoted education
among picture brides. In the years when local anti-Japanese activists
used the negative perception of picture marriages for their propaganda,
these Japanese Christian organizations in turn became merciless in theircriticism of picture brides. Takako Takanashi, for example, a scholar ofJapan Women’s College, wrote a scathing article for the April 1919 issueof Joshi Seinen-kai (Young women’s world), a magazine published by
the Japanese YWCA. Takanashi described the picture bride as “a pretentiously modish, ignorant, inexperienced virgin,” “a reckless woman
who comes to America believing that a man she saw only once, in a single picture, will provide her with her dream of elegant western living.”
Dumfounded by the picture brides’ shameless ambition, Takahashi concludes her article with a question: “Who raised the girls to disregard suchan important life issue as marriage?”47 She makes no reference to theimportance of providing picture brides with care and support because
they are the ones crucial to building stable Japanese families in America;

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on the contrary, the evaluation of picture brides is derisive and dismissive.
CONCLUSION
This article has discussed how Japanese picture brides in early twentieth-century California came to be regarded as examples of the “vainwoman.” The modern technology of photography, which made possible
the creation, commodiﬁcation, and exchange of self-images (i.e., photographs) and the development of the picture marriage system, was a crucial medium for the emergence of the image and discourse of the “vainwoman.”
Japanese modernization, from which emerged the social trend of glorifying romantic love, also saw the re-establishment of a conservative
ideal of womanhood—ryosai kenbo—which was incongruent with thetrend of romantic love that valued external female beauty. Out of these
opposing phenomena emerged the discourse of the “vain woman” thatcriticized external female beauty as a sign of arrogance. Society’s evaluation of women who used self-portraits to present and commodify theirimage was ambivalent and conﬂicted. A woman was appreciated forbeing beautiful; yet, her act of creating a beautiful self-image seemed tosuggest self-conceit or vanity, and hence was subversive of the female
ideals of ryosai kenbo. Picture marriage thus entails both positive andnegative evaluations of female identity.
The marriage method practiced by Japanese immigrants was one that
included romance, but romance was subordinated to the gender roles
structured around the ie ideal, the modern Japanese family structure andcivic moral system. Under the leadership of Japanese reformists andorganizations, the Japanese community aimed to construct a collective
Japanese consciousness by modeling the Japanese-American familyaround the ie concept, even as it tried to Americanize the community.
Japanese wives, deﬁned as the major homemaker, were especially
under public scrutiny for their observance of the ryosai kenbo ideal. A
picture bride who indulged in romance and obsessed about her appearance was suspected of being a “vain woman” who would disrupt the family system and thus endanger the restructured Japanese communities. Inturn, a disrupted Japanese community would degrade the reputation of
all Japanese settlers and increase the local anti-Japanese sentiment. Thus,
the “vain woman” became the target for criticism, scorn, and reform. She

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became the scapegoat for all the problems within a patriarchal familysystem, which was in the process of reconstructing the morals of the disordered immigrant Japanese society.
NOTES
1In the literature of Japanese immigration history, this sort of arranged marriage(shashin kekkon) practiced by Japanese immigrants in Hawaii and the continental UnitedStates has been translated into English as “picture-bride marriage,” “picture-bride practice,” or “picture marriage.” This article uses “picture marriage,” because the term is adirect translation from the Japanese term.
2
For the major scholarship studying the topic of Japanese picture marriage and picture brides in early twentieth-century United States, see Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The
World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885–1924 (New York: Free Press,
1988): Chapter V: “Permanent Settlement”; Alice Yun Chai, “Picture Brides: Feminist
Analysis of Life Histories of Hawai’i’s Early Immigrant Women from Japan, Okinawa,
and Korea,” in Donna Gabaccia, ed., Seeking Common Ground: Multidisciplinary Studies
of Immigrant Women in the United States (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1992); Eileen
Sunada Sarasohn, Issei Women: Echoes from Another Frontier (Palo Alto: Paciﬁc
Books, 1998); Eithne Luibheid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002): Chapter 3: “Birthing a Nation:
Race, Ethnicity, and Childbearing”; Rumiko Masubuchi, “1910-Nendai no Hainichi to‘Shashin Kekkon’ ” (Anti-Japanese sentiment during the 1910s and ‘picture marriage’),in Soken Togami, ed., Japanizu Amerikan: Iju kara Jiritsu e no Ayumi (JapaneseAmerican: the path from emigration to independence) (Kyoto: Minerva Shobo, 1986);
Ikumi Yanagisawa, “ ‘Shashin Hanayome’ Mondai towa Nandattanoka—Sono Gensetsu
no Keisei wo Chushin ni—” (‘Picture Brides’: What was the Issue?), Aichi Shukutoku
Daigaku: Ibunka Komunikehshon (Aichi Shukutoku University: Multicultural communication), vol. 6 (March 2003); Kei Tanaka, “Japanese Picture Marriage in 1900–1924
California: Construction of Japanese Race and Gender” (Ph. D. diss., Rutgers University,2002); and “20-Seiki Shoto no Nihon·Kariforunia ‘Shashin Hanayome’ Shugyo—
Nihonjin Imin Josei no Jenda to Kurasu no Keisei—” (Training Picture Brides in Early
Twentieth Century Japan and California: Construction of Gender and Class of Immigrant Japanese Women), Shakai Kagaku (The Social Sciences), no. 68 (January 2002).
3
Ichioka, The Issei, 164; Kazuo Ito, Hokubei Hyakunenzakura (Issei: A History ofJapanese Immigrants in North America) (Tokyo: Nichibo Shuppan, 1969), 243–44.
4
Japanese Association of America, Zaibei Nihonjinshi (History of Japanese in
America) (San Francisco: Japanese Association of America, 1940), 90; Masubuchi,“1910-nendai no Hainichi to ‘Shashin Kekkon’,” 297–98. The Gentlemen’s Agreementof 1908 further fostered the picture-marriage practice. To reduce Japanese immigrationand to alleviate rising anti-Japanese sentiment in California, the Japanese government
voluntarily stopped issuing passports to Japanese labor immigrants to the United States,and entry was limited to wives and families of immigrants previously admitted. Consequently, it fostered Japanese family uniﬁcation and increased the inﬂux of female
immigrants. See Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movementin California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1962), 44; and Ichioka, The Issei, 71–72.
5
For example, Ichioka, The Issei; Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride:
Three Generations of Japanese American Women in the United States (Philadelphia:

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Temple University Press, 1986); and Linda Tamura, Hood River Issei: An Oral Historyof Japanese Settlers in Oregon’s Hood River Valley (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1993).
6
For example, see Ichioka, The Issei; Sarasohn, Issei Women, and Ito, Hokubei
Hyakunenzakura.
7
Michiko Kawai, “Tobei Fujin wa Seiko Shitsutsu Ariya” (Is the immigration ofJapanese women successful?), Joshi Seinenkai (Young women’s world), vol. 13, no. 11(December 1916): 612, 614, cited in Tanaka, “20-Seiki Shoto no Nihon·Kariforunia,”
310–11. Hyodayu Shimanuki, the founder of Rikko Jogakko, also stresses in his bookthat a woman qualiﬁed to become a picture bride should not be “vain.” See Shimanuki,
Rikkokai towa Nanzoya (What is Rikkokai?) (Tokyo: Keiseisha, 1911), 137–47.
8
For criticisms and warnings made to picture brides for their “vanity” by Japanesechurch organizations, see Rokuichi Kusumoto, “Beikoku Kashu Engan no Doho
(Japanese brethren on the West Coast of California),” Joshi Seinenkai, vol. 11, no. 7(July 1914): 374–80; “Tobeisha no Shiori (Guide for emigrant women),” vol. 14, no. 6(July 1917): 279; Shin Sekai Shinbun (Japanese Daily New World ) (28 June 1912): 5;
Nichibei Shinbun (Japanese American News) (28, 29 and 30 June 1913): 5; and (1November 1914): 3. Criticism by the Japanese associations, see Shinsekai Shinbun (8April 1916): 3; and (15–16 and 17 August 1916): 3. By the Japanese press, see Shin
Sekai Shinbun (6 and 24 June 1909); (14 December 1910): 1; (7 September 1912): 2;(10, 11 and 12 October 1913): 2; (10 April 1916): 1; (11 August 1920): 4; Nichibei
Shinbun (29, 30 and 31 January 1913): 3; (3 September 1914): 1; (3 April 1914): 7; (26October 1914): 6; and (15 October 1916): 7.
9This study is based on my research conducted at the Records of the Immigration andNaturalization Service, National Archives and Record Administration, San Bruno,
California where marriage arrangement photographs of picture-marriage couples werehoused. From the extensively large volume of photographs, I selected photographs of
120 picture-marriage couples from the odd-numbered years between 1907 and 1919, 10
couples for the years 1907 and 1909, and 20 couples, for the years 1911, 1913, 1915,
1917, and 1919.
10
Rika Sato, “Shashin to Josei—Atarashii Shikaku Media no Tojo to ‘Miru/Mirareru’
Jibun no Shutsugen (Photography and women: advent of the new visual media and emergence of self who is ‘watching/being watched’),” Akiko Okuda, ed., Onna to Otoko no
Jiku: Nihon Joseishi Saiko (Time and space between women and men: Japanese women’s history revisited), vol. 9 (Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 2000); Junko Saeki, “Shashinshu
ni Natta Meiji no Onna” (Meiji women in self-portrait albums), Pola Cultural Institute,ed., Bakumatsu·Meiji Bijincho (Photo-album of beauties in the last Tokugawa and Meiji
eras); Richard Chalfen, Turning Leaves: The Photograph Collection of Two JapaneseAmerican Families (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991); Christopher
Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1997); and Shawn Michelle Smith, American Archives: Gender, Race,and Class in Visual Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
11
On the freedom of marriage and praise for female beauty, for example see Shoichi
Inouye, Bijinron (Stories of beauty) (Tokyo: Ashahi Shinbunsha, 1995), 64–76. On theprevail of romantic love and its inﬂuence on gender relations in Meiji Japan, see Teruko
Inouye, “Ren’aikan to Kekkonkan no Keifu” (Genealogy of romance and marriage),
Nihon Joseishi Ronshu (Essays on Japanese women’s history), vol. 4 (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Bunkan, 1998), 221–38; Mitziko Sawada, Tokyo Life, New York Dreams:
Urban Japanese Visions of America, 1890–1924 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1996), Chapter 5: “The Road to Success,” and Chapter 7: “Maiden of Japan,

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Women of the West”; and Junko Saeki, ‘Iro’ to ‘Ai’ no Hikaku Bunkashi (Comparative
history of culture on ‘affair’ and ‘love’) (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinposha, 1998).
12
See for example, Emiko Ochiai, “Kindai Kazoku wo Meguru Gensetsu” (Discourse
on modern family), Shun Inouye, Chizuko Uyeno et al. ed., Kazoku no Shakaigaku(Sociology on family) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1997); Kazuye Muta, Senryaku toshite no
Kazoku: Kindai Nihon no Kokumin Kokka Keisei to Josei (Family as strategy: founding
nation state and women in Japan) (Tokyo: Shin’yosha, 1997); and Chizuko Uyeno,
Kindai Kazoku no Seiritsu to Shuen (Rise and fall of modern family) (Tokyo: Iwanami,
1994).
13
Inouye, Bijin-ron, 66–68, 82–86.
14
Muta, Senryaku toshite no Kazoku; Shukuko Akiyeda, “ ‘Ryosai Kenbo Shugi
Kyoiku’ no Itsudatsu to Kaishu—Taisho, Showa Zenki wo Chushin ni—” (Deviation
and recovering of ‘ryosai kenbo education’ during the Taisho and early Showa eras),
Okuda, ed., Onna to Otoko no Jiku, 451–80; and Sharon H. Nolte and Sally Ann
Hastings, “The Meiji State’s Policy Toward Women, 1890–1910,” Gail Lee Bernstein,ed., Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991), 152, 172.
15
Inouye, Bijinron, 9–19, 52–56.
16
By the 1870s, photography in modernizing Japan had become increasingly used toserve wealthy, upper-class Japanese for taking personal and family portraits on special
occasions for the family records. By the 1890s, although a photograph cost about 10 sen
and so was expensive, this custom became at least accessible and subsequently popularamong the different social classes. Ambitious young men of various social backgrounds
who moved from rural communities to the cities, hoping to enter the new middle-classthrough education and establishing business, increasingly had their portraits taken as
proof of their success. For the advent of photography in Meiji Japan, see TokuhikoMatsumoto, “Bunmei Kaika no nakano Shashin” (Photography in Westernizing Japan),Takeshi Ozawa, “Shashin no Makuake” (Dawning of photography), both in: Nihon
Shashin Zenshu (Complete series of photography in Japan), vol. 4 (Tokyo: Shogakugan,1985); and Kotaro Iizawa, Nihon Shashinshi wo Aruku (Tracing the history of photography in Japan) (Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 1992).
17
Sato, “Shashin to Josei,” 201–4; 208–9.
18
Ibid., 212–24.
19
Ibid., 214–18.
20
Sawada, Tokyo Life, New York Dreams, 151–54; Kunio Yanagita, Meiji Taishoshi
Sesohen (History of the Meiji and Taisho eras: social conditions), vol. 2 (Tokyo:
Kodansha, 1976; ﬁrst published, 1930), 33–60.
21
Saeki, “Shashinshu ni Natta Meiji no Onna,” 93–95; Inouye, Bijinron, 29–34; andShoichi Inouye, Bijin Kontesuto Hyakunenshi (A hundred-years history of beauty contest) (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1997), 8–30.
22
Sato, “Shashin no Josei,” 218–20.
23
Ibid., 222–24; Kunimitsu Kawamura, Otome no Inori: Kindai Josei Imeji no Tanjo(Pray of virgins: birth of the image of modern woman) (Tokyo: Kinokuniya shoten,1993), 126–32.
24
Masao Tanaka et al., “Jinbutsu to Shozo” (Individual and portrait), Nihon Shashinshi
Zenshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1986): 125.
25
Sarasohn, Issei Women, 21, 32, 33, 39, 51, 59. A Japanese Community newspaper
also reports that the picture brides were largely from the middle-class family. See
Nichibei Shinbun (3 August 1916): 3; and (6 May 1917): 3. While picture marriage was
spread among the middle-class as an exogamous custom, for brides from rural working

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and farming classes, it would have originally been established as a type of endogamous
custom. It is estimated that the idea of picture marriage was spread among the rural working and farming classes by word of mouth from neighbors who had already sent brides
to the United States. Working class picture brides were usually from the same villages
where the grooms originated and from whence chain-migration and mass labor-migration to Hawaii and the Paciﬁc Coast had proliferated. Kawai, “Tobei Fujin wa Seiko
Shitsutsu Ariya,” (Is Japanese female migration into the United States successful?) Joshi
Seinenkai, vol. 13, no. 10 (November 1916): 551.
26
For example, Shin Sekai Shinbun (1 January 1913); Kyuin Okina, “Kumogakure”(Vanishing), Okina Kyuin Zenshu (Complete works of Kyuin Okina), vol. 5 (Toyama:1972), 352–56.
27
File 24–14, Box 18589, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service(hereafter cited as RINS), National Archives and Record Administration, San Bruno,
California (hereafter cited as NARA).
28
File 10–16, Box 10448, RINS, NARA.
29
File 7–4, Box 14880, RINS, NARA.
30“Zaiso Hojin Shokugyokan” (Occupations of the Japanese in San Francisco),
Nichibei Shinbun (30 July 1914): 3.
31
For a guide for newly arrived women authored by the Japanese Association ofAmerica, Shin Sekai Shinbun (15–16 and 17 August 1916): 3. For guides issued by theJapanese Christian organizations, especially by YWCA, Yokohama YWCA, Tobei
Fujin Kokoroe (Instruction for Japanese women going to America) (1915); and Michiko
Kawai, “Tobeisha no Shori: Seiyo Reiho” (A guide for Japanese traveling to America:
western manners), Joshi Seinenkai, vol. 14, no. 6 (July 1917). See also Tanaka, “20Seiki Shoto.”
32
Sarasohn, The Issei, 107; and Ito, Hokubei Hyakunenzakura, 313.
33
Shin Sekai Shinbun (2 October 1913): 2; (1 January 1920): 3; and Teruko Kumei,
Gaikokujin wo Meguru Shakaishi: Kindai Amerika to Nihonjin Imin (A social history
concerning foreigners: modern America and Japanese immigrantion) (Tokyo: Yuzankaku,
1995), 142–43.
34
Glen, Issei, Nisei, War Bride, 22–26; and Ichioka, The Issei, 190–92.
35
Rumi Yasutake, “Transnational Women’s Activism: The Woman’s ChristianTemperance Union in Japan and Beyond, 1858–1920” (Ph. D. diss., University ofCalifornia Los Angeles, 1998), 254–55.
36
Shin Sekai Shinbun (14 December 1910): 1; (3 September 1912): 3; (7 September
1912): 7; (10 April 1916): 1; (15 October 1916): 1; (13 August 1919): 2; (11 August
1920): 4; Nichibei Shinbun (29 January 1913): 3; (31 January 1913): 7; (26 October
1914): 6; and (15 October 1916): 1. Also, see Kumei, Gaikokujin wo Meguru Shakaishi,
142.
37
For example, see Ito, Hokubei Hyakunenzakura, 133–60; Sarasohn, Issei Women,
91–146; and Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride, 67–79, 109–17.
38
Okina, Okina Kyuin Zenshu, vol. 1, 70–73; vol.3, 171–72.
39
For example, see Sacramento Valley News (11 November 1913): 9; Nichibei
Shinbun (18 February 1916): 7; Shin Sekai Shinbun (8 September 1912): 4; Shin Sekai
Shinbun (21–26 October 1916); Shakuma Washizu, “Rekishi Inmetsu no Nageki” (Grieffor demolish of history), no. 55, Nichibei Shinbun (31 May 1922); and Okina, Okina
Kyuin Zenshu, vol. 3, 36.
40
Ichioka, The Issei, 170.
41
For example, see Shin Sekai Shinbun (17, 18 April, 3 May 1908); Nichibei Shinbun(2, 15 July 1913, and 17–19 February 1916).

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Shin Sekai Shinbun (2 March 1911). Also ibid. (30 June 1911).
Nichibei Shinbun (28, 30, 31 January, 19–21 February 1913). Also Shin Sekai
Shinbun (5, 6 July 1913). In a different article reporting on a Japanese man who sent his“vain bride” back to Japan, the husband in question was referred to as a “manly man.”See Shin Sekai Shinbun (3 July 1919).
44
Kyuin Okina, “Kumogakure,” 352–56.
45
Shin Sekai Shinbun (7–15, 16 November 1912); Nichibei Shinbun (8 November
1912).
46
Shin Sekai Shinbun (13 November 1912). In some articles, picture brides showedremorse for their vanity. The January 1, 1913 issue of Nichibei Shinbun runs a New
Year’s resolution sent by a picture bride, M. Y. In the resolution, M. Y. confesses her
original disappointment in her rustic husband and shabby life in America; however, after
learning her husband was gentle, she came to a realization that “she came to America
out of her vanity” and admitted that she had been wrong. M. Y. concludes the resolution vowing to fulﬁll her duty “for the future prosperity of the Yamato race.” (Nichibei
Shinbun, 1 January, 1913). Different articles told a story of a picture bride who was rapedby her villainous husband. Following the incident, the bride was said to have shown
regret for coming to America to satisfy her vanity (Shin Sekai Shinbun, 12, 13, 16, and
17 April, 1914). Because the role of these newspapers was to control the morals of thecommunity, these articles are also estimated to have demonstrated to the readers thecause and effect of the picture brides’ vanity in order to suggest prescribed gender roles.
47
Takako Takanashi, “Shashin Kekkon no Hanashi” (Story of picture marriages),
Joshi Seinenkai, vol. 16, no. 4 (April 1919).
43