Picture Bride by Yoshiko Uchida

Abstract

374 Western American Literature out of this town,” Duane remarks. “I guess they think they can go fast enough to escape gravity and get in orbit somewhere else. But mostly they just turn around and come back.” Their return in Texasville seems rather unfortunate. ANN RONALD University of Nevada, Reno Picture Bride. ByYoshiko Uchida. (Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Press, 1987. 216 pages, $14.95.) Among Japanese pioneer immigrants, most marriages were arranged by matchmakers. There was no courtship, no romancing; but an exchange of photographs helped in the decision-making deliberations. This fictional por­ trayal of such a marriage begins with a vivid description of one picture bride, Hana Omiya, age 21, as she crosses the ocean in 1917 to marry Taro Takeda, age 31, the son of a friend of a relative. Hana has only a teen-age picture of Taro. His already balding head startles her when they meet at the dock. After a Christian wedding, Hana survives few triumphs and many tragedies as she adjusts to a puzzling life in America. The story ends in Topaz (a World War II internment camp in the Utah desert) where Hana emerges to face an unknown future after a final tragedy. With dignity and compassion, the Japanese-American author gently steers the reader away from the stereotype expressed in May 1942 by Chase Clark, then governor of Idaho, when he said, “Japs live like rats, breed like rats, and act like rats.” Hana and Taro live in an all-white (though unfriendly), middle-class neighborhood in Oakland, California. They raise only one child. Hana fixes oatmeal for breakfast. She bakes cakes. But for dinner, she reverts to a menu of rice, bamboo shoots, broiled eel, and the notorious malodorous pickled Japanese radish (daikon). The reader familiar with earlier Japanese-American literature may be interested in the different portrayals of the immigrant woman as described by writers in the 1920s, 50s, and 80s. For example, in 1928 Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, of Columbia University, wrote Daughter of the Samurai, a charming in-depth autobiography telling of her childhood, her arrival in the eastern United States as a bride, and her integration into white society. In an area where there were no other Japanese among the intelligentsia, she was a novelty and a curiosity, happily exchanging and sharing cultural ideas with her receptive all-white neighbors and friends. A generation and a war later, in 1953, Monica Sone (Kazuko Itoi) wrote in Nisei Daughter of her early life in Seattle, her later incarceration in Minidoka Camp (near Jerome, Idaho) during World War II, and her eventual relocation in the Midwest. In terms of the Japanese-American attitude of the day, Sone wrote with tolerance and resigned acceptance of how her family survived the years of prejudice. Sone interpreted her mother’ssocial blunders as embarrassing but humorous incidents. It was not yet a time for ethnic pride. Reviews 375 In 1982, illuminated by civil rights and women’s lib, Yoshiko Uchida wrote Desert Exile, in which she described the intolerable suffering of her family as victims of prejudice in an all-white neighborhood in Berkeley, and their eventual incarceration in Topaz Camp. Sone and Uchida, both born circa 1920, had immigrant mothers who were daughters of Samurai and whose marriages were arranged for them. Now, in Picture Bride, Uchida has written in a language today’s reader can more easily identify with. The beautiful Hana is a daughter of a Samurai, a composite of the author’s mother and other women who arrived before 1920 and survived the years of public misunderstanding. With insight, pathos, and deep understanding, the author, in her graceful, dignified way, dares to expose Hana as a long-suffering, independent, assertive woman who is frustrated and stifled as she struggles to adjust to a hostile culture that is blind to her sense of values. For the reader who does not wish to be drowned in historical detail, this novel is a welcome diversion from the ethnic oral histories and non-fiction books now on the market. SUSAN SUNADA Logan, Utah Antelope Springs. By G. Clifton Wisler. (New York: Walker and Company, 1986. 187 pages, $14.95.) This juvenile Western deserves praise...