If you haven’t seen the movie Picture Bride before, you can catch it as part of the opening day festivities for a new Bishop Museum Exhibit: “Textured Lives – Japanese Immigrant Clothing from the Plantations of Hawaii.”
Here’s a look back at the groundbreaking Hawaii film and its director, the late Kayo Hatta. She was inspired by the stories of Japanese women who came to Hawaii as picture brides. They often sang work songs while they toiled on Hawaii’s sugar plantations. Hatta called the “hole hole bushi” songs, the Japanese blues.
Picture Bride
Aired on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” May 16, 1995
By Heidi Chang
In the early 1900s, more than 20,000 Japanese women crossed the Pacific to marry Japanese plantation workers in Hawaii. Because those marriages were arranged through photographs and letters, the young women became known as “Picture Brides.” Their story is told in a new movie titled Picture Bride. It follows the journey of young woman from Japan who is lured to Hawaii to marry a man she’s never seen, except through photographs. And when she arrives, she’s shocked to discover he’s old enough to be her father.
Listen to the Story (6:23)
The film stars Youki Kudoh, Akira Takayama, Tamlyn Tomita and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. Toshiro Mifune makes a cameo appearance in what turned out to be his last movie role.
- Director Kayo Hatta (lower left) rehearses a scene with actor Toshiro Mifune
Click on images to enlarge
Picture Bride won the Audience Award for best dramatic film at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995. The groundbreaking film was directed by Kayo Hatta. She died in 2005 in California. She was 47.
This radio story won a 1998 National Communicator Award.
The Picture Bride photos are featured in a viewers guide funded by the Hawaii Council for the Humanities.
