Picture Bride

During the early 20th century, alien land laws restricted the property-owning rights of Japanese Americans. However, the children immigrants—as American-born citizens—could own property. Therefore, parents fostered hope that their children could have prosperous lives. By working laborious jobs and enduring inequality, immigrants like Taro and Hana work toward change that will benefit future generations. Taro hopes to earn enough money to buy his shop and make Mary the legal owner. This aspiration is pragmatic but also displays Taro’s hope for future prosperity.

Taro hopes for racial equality in addition to financial prosperity. He is aware of anti-Asian prejudices and works to eliminate these prejudices through moral rigor and patience. When the Takedas move to a predominantly white neighborhood, Taro prioritizes presenting Japanese Americans in a positive light. When white neighbors attempt to intimidate the Takedas into leaving the neighborhood, Taro urges them to actually spend time with him and his family. Additionally, Taro becomes conscious of their outward appearance. He maintains his lawn and house with discipline. Taro’s adherence to positive appearance relates to his hope for future equality: “The way we live and comport ourselves may someday affect the way the second generation Japanese Americans, Mary and her friends, are treated in this country” (69). Before the Takedas, most of Taro’s neighbors probably had not interacted with Asian Americans. During the early and middle 20th century, white America was typically insular and reticent to change. Taro hopes to contribute to a heterogeneous society in which prejudice is a thing of the past. Both he and Hana try to instill strong morals in Mary: “Hana and Taro [...] felt it important for Mary to excel, because of pride in their race, because they must dispel the notion that they were inferior people” (120). Their hope for future equality is not limited to Mary and includes all future descendants of Japanese Americans.

In the wake of the concentration camps, Taro’s idealism is challenged. Still, his faith in the future is never completely eradicated. He interprets the camps as “the result of fear and hatred and greed among bigoted and misguided men” and not the “lofty and good” principles on which America was founded (209). He believes that with time, prejudice will wane. Even after years of social struggle, Taro believes optimism is crucial: “Japanese Americans, by not becoming embittered, had not yet allowed themselves to be destroyed” (209). In these reflections, Taro expresses hope for the future rather than the present. Taro’s persistent optimism displays the constant battle for equality within the Japanese American community. Picture Bride pays homage to the Japanese Americans who endured oppression so future generations could prosper. Through the novel’s decades-spanning story, Uchida displays the painful slowness of social progress.

The lives of Nisei (children of Japanese immigrants) are more different than their parents could have imagined. Mary serves as one example of future generations of Japanese American families: She assimilates into American society and distances herself from her Japanese heritage. Uchida presents the assimilation of future generations as an unavoidable reality. She names Mary Takeda and Joseph Cantelli as an allusion to the biblical Mary and Joseph, the parents of Christ. By employing this allusion, Uchida signals a new era in American history. Just as Christ’s birth signaled the beginning of a larger event in human history, Laurie’s birth signals social progress in American history. Mary Takeda’s and Joseph Cantelli’s partnership represents a new era of relative harmony between people of different racial and cultural backgrounds. This is not to say that prejudice will be eliminated completely but that Japanese Americans and Euro Americans will no longer live in polar opposition to each other. Laurie does not receive extensive characterization, but she represents yet another generation of Americans. Uchida’s decision to make Laurie female rather than male also ties to the theme of Female Solidarity in the Immigration Experience. In her novel, Uchida concretely establishes the persistence of Japanese American women. By making Laurie a Christ analog, Uchida implies that women will be intrinsic to the prosperity of future generations.

Beginning with her misguided emotional affair with Yamaka, Hana is burdened by guilt. Hana blames herself for the deaths of Yamaka and her son, Ichiro. She interprets their deaths as a punishment from God. Through altruism and self-sacrifice, she hopes to gain both God’s and Taro’s forgiveness for her transgression. Her pursuit of forgiveness corresponds to her fledgling relationship with Christianity, and she believes that “her salvation lay in being forgiven by this God” (64) as well as her husband.

Salvation is a prominent aspect of Christianity, divine protection earned by following the central tenets of a religion. In Christian contexts, salvation is earned by proving one’s worth to God. Hana’s charity towards others—particularly related to Kenji Nishima—is influenced by her need to prove her worth to God. When Hana offers refuge to Kenji during his depressive period, she does so for Kenji’s benefit. However, self-development also motivates her. She hopes that helping Kenji will “bring some purpose and meaning to her own life” (93). Furthermore, she secretly hopes that helping Kenji will earn her God’s forgiveness.

Kenji emerges from the Takedas as a resurrected man, and Hana is proud of him as well as herself: “[S]he had repaid a great debt that had weighed her down for so long with the burden of guilt. Perhaps, she thought, God would now forgive her. But she wasn’t sure if Taro ever could.” Hana considers the good that she has ushered into the world while acknowledging that she has not yet earned Taro’s trust. The distinction suggests that earning divine forgiveness can be easier than earning forgiveness from a loved one.

The difficulty of human forgiveness persists in Hana’s relationship with Mary. Taro immediately forgives Mary for abandoning the family, but Hana cannot. Mary’s desertion creates a rift between them that takes time to heal. Hana forgives Mary when she realizes the similarity between Mary’s decision-making and her own: “Hana found that she had forgiven Mary for everything. She no longer remembered many of the things Mary had done to hurt them, and she understood her daughter’s need to be free” (180). Hana and Mary are both independent women. Their ambition beckons them from home to pursue a life outside of social norms. By exploring forgiveness between mother and daughter, wife and husband, and human and God, Uchida evaluates the glacial nature of forgiveness. She also establishes that forgiveness requires self-evaluation and growth for both the forgiver and the forgiven.