PICTURE BRIDES

The picture bride system was extremely important to the Japanese immigrants during the early 1900’s. It was a system that allowed Japanese men in the United States to find wives from overseas in order to start families. Japanese bachelors would mail their self portraits to a matchmaker in Japan who then matched the picture with other potential brides. Once the matchmaker found a suitable match, they were married and the bride was sent over on a one-way trip to the United States. Quite often, the only photo that the men had access to were portraits of them when they were much younger. Most often the women in Japan were duped into thinking that their future husband in America were as young as they were in the picture; however this was not the case. The brides later found out as soon as they met their husband for the first time that they were much older than and not as attractive as they once were. In the portraits the bachelors were young, however in reality they had aged from the laborious work of agriculture and the psychological stress of social marginalization. One would assume that the bride could easily just go back home to Japan but because they lacked the funds for a ride back and also because of their culture, it was important to have pride and “save face” and deal with the circumstances on their own in order to prevent shaming the family.