Making Picture Bride:
Balancing History and Fiction in Dramatic Film
by Kayo Hatta

In filmmaking, there is sometimes a magical moment when you forget you are making a movie. All the years of endless grantwriting, fundraising, research, screenwriting, the
Actors Akira Takayama (left) and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (right) with director Kayo Hatta

Actors Akira Takayama (left) and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (right) with director Kayo Hatta
frantic weeks of pre-production and finally, the daily battles of production, are momentarily forgotten. For many of us who worked on PICTURE BRIDE, this happened on the first day we shot our canefield scenes in Waialua on O'ahu's North Shore.

A hush fell over the set as one by one, the extras began arriving in costume over the crest of the hill, some holding the hands of small children, also dressed in period clothing. It was as if we were watching an old sepia-toned black and white photograph coming to life in vivid colors: the deep blue indigo of the women's work clothing, the pearly white of clouds against blue skies, the lush green of endless acres of canefields, undulating in the morning breeze as they have for over a hundred years.

Actors Youki Kudoh (left) and Tamlyn Tomita (right) between scenes

Actors Youki Kudoh (left) and Tamlyn Tomita (right) between scenes
Then, actress Tamlyn Tomita arrived and began warming up her voice, soulfully singing a "hole hole bushi" work song: "Today's hoe hana work doesn't seem so bad/Because last night I received a letter from home." The other women answered with a rousing chorus of "yoishare, yoishare." As they continued singing, I felt a surge of renewed energy, reminded of why we struggled for five long years to tell this story.

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The vision for PICTURE BRIDE began with voices - women singing hole hole bushi. I still remember the first time I heard them. In 1986 I contacted Harry Urata, a music teacher and ethnomusicologist in Nu'uanu, Honolulu and he sent me an audiocassette of songs sung by retired plantation workers whom he had recorded in the 1960s. These earthy, sometimes bitter or angry, sometimes tender, sentimental, or raucously humorous songs were a revelation - we had our own blues, the Japanese Hawaiian blues - similar to the call-and-response slave songs of the cotton plantations in the old South.

Kayo Hatta (left) interviews picture brides

Kayo Hatta (left) interviews picture brides
The songs connected me in a visceral way to the souls of the plantation workers, shattering for me stereotypes of issei (first-generation) women - that our grandmothers had gone through untold hardship, but endured it all with enryo (quiet reserve) and gaman (perseverance). This was perhaps true, but more often it was an over-reverential, rarefied image that bypassed the flesh and blood of who these women were, and only mythologized them. For me, the hole hole bushi songs made these women very real. These plain-spoken, earthy lyrics expressed their feelings about work, their hatred of the luna, their home life, complaints about their husband's gambling, and everyday topics such as burning the rice or how the baby cried all night. But the simplicity of these songs is deceptive.

In researching and writing the PICTURE BRIDE story, we found that it was precisely the small, seemingly mundane details of daily life - giving birth, raising children, the hardship of daily work - that revealed the lives of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers most intimately. Through these details we come to understand and appreciate who they really were - and ultimately, who we are today. This is what we hoped to accomplish in telling their stories. Indeed, some of most gratifying responses to the film are from the many people who have told us that the film inspired them to find out more about their own family history, and to interview surviving grandparents before it was too late.

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Kana and Riyo search for Kana's baby in a cane fire

Kana and Riyo search for Kana's baby in a cane fire
Although the personalities of the main characters in PICTURE BRIDE are largely inspired by my grandmothers, the picture bride experience was not actually an immediate part of my own family history. My grandmothers, both wives of Buddhist ministers, were already married when they immigrated to Hawai'i. Thus, from its initial development to its final scriptwriting stage, the collaboration of historians, local scholars, and writers was critical in developing a level of authenticity that would distinguish PICTURE BRIDE from the slew of made-in-Hawai'i movies and episodic television shows that were more projections of Hollywood fantasy than reality.

One of the most vital collaborations during the research and writing stage was with local historian and writer Barbara Kawakami. Barbara, who had been doing years of research for her book on Japanese immigrant clothing in Hawai'i, facilitated my own efforts to do the primary research of interviewing actual picture brides. She helped me locate the few surviving brides and often accompanied me on interviews. The oral history process is a long and arduous one, requiring time and patience to develop rapport with one's subjects. But Barbara had already gained the trust of her interviewees, and they felt comfortable in speaking openly and intimately with me about their experiences.

Riyo confronts the harsh realities of plantation life

Riyo confronts the harsh realities of plantation life
However, the work we set out to create was not a documentary or docu-drama, but a dramatic film - a film that we hoped would reach broad audiences, and especially younger generations. Narrative film at its best has the power to transport the audience into another place and time, so that you forget you are watching a movie. The challenge for us as filmmakers was to make a film that was both historically accurate and narratively compelling. It took many drafts of the scripts to strike the right balance.

Perhaps the turning point came in 1991, late one afternoon in the middle of the Waialua canefields. In PICTURE BRIDE, the characters' lives are intrinsically connected to the land and the landscape was becoming more and more of a character in our screenwriting. Wanting to immerse myself as much as possible in that environment, I would often drive out to Waialua from Honolulu. There I had a favorite place to think and write: a tiny, neglected graveyard in the middle of the canefields where Japanese and Portuguese cane workers had been buried. On this afternoon, I had brought along the cassette tape of the hole hole bushi songs. As the sun set, the evening winds picked up and blew through the silhouetted canefields, and I got "chicken skin" hearing the ghostly whispering sound accompanying the old songs. It was then that I realized that in order to create a compelling narrative and move the story beyond docu-drama, it would have to dramatize the strongly spiritual aspect of Hawai'i.

Matsuji and Riyo picnic in the 'real paradise'

Matsuji and Riyo picnic in the 'real paradise'
In PICTURE BRIDE, Riyo's family secrets are manifested as "ghosts of the past" which follow her to the new world; as soon as she arrives, she hears mysterious voices and singing as the wind blows through the cane. Riyo perceives these spirits with uneasiness, whereas her friend Kana perceives them with reverence and as a natural part of her environment, as did many immigrants who brought over their folk beliefs. We see that until Riyo is freed from the burden of her secrets, she cannot live in peace or accept Hawai'i as her new home. With the help of scholar Glen Grant, whose specialty is the spiritual lore of Hawai'i, I was able to explore this area in depth and incorporate a sense of magical realism into the story. I tried to show how Asian immigrants, like native Hawaiians, perceived the phenomena around them through spiritual frameworks that encompassed the supernatural.

Historically, as in modern life today, folk beliefs and superstitions existed alongside traditional religions such as Buddhism or Christianity. Formal religious institutions were especially important to immigrants, giving them not only a sense of spiritual continuity from the old world, but social cohesion and structure in their new world. With the advent of picture brides, communities flourished and plantation workers were finally able to start families, thus necessitating social institutions such as schools and churches.

Plantation workers gather for a bon odori

Plantation workers gather for a bon odori
In PICTURE BRIDE, Buddhist rites and ceremonies are an essential part of Riyo's healing process as she comes to terms with the death of loved ones and finds her place in her new community. This is dramatized in several scenes: Matsuji presents Riyo with a home altar so she can properly pay respects to her parents; a toro-nagashi floating lantern ceremony helps guide the spirits back to the land of the dead; and finally, the community comes together for an obon dance, celebrating with the spirits of the dead. The toro-nagashi usually takes place at the end of the obon festival, but in the film the order is reversed to reinforce the celebratory note upon which we wanted the story to end.

Balancing authenticity with the need to reach a broad audience also informed some other aesthetic choices in the film. For instance, we wanted the characters to speak in plantation Pidgin, but if we had them speak exactly the way it was spoken back in 1918, the entire film would have had to be subtitled. Working with Pidgin-language advisors, some debate ensued over linguistic purity and authenticity, but we finally reached what we felt was an acceptable compromise, modifying the Pidgin so the audience would at least get the flavor of the Creole without subtitles.

Actor Toshiro Mifune rehearses scene with Kayo Hatta (lower left)

Actor Toshiro Mifune rehearses scene with Kayo Hatta (lower left)
Realities of time and a very limited budget also forced us to make other difficult decisions. Because this was the first film about the formative period of Hawai'i's multi-ethnic past, we naturally wanted to tell the stories of not only the Japanese, but the Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese, Portuguese and Hawaiians as well. However, rather than sacrificing depth for breadth, we made the decision to focus on one ethnic group with the hope that PICTURE BRIDE would inspire more stories from other ethnic perspectives. And in order to tell the story well, we tried to focus in on how the historical and social forces of an era affect a specific group on a personal level - in this case, the marriage between Riyo and Matsuji, and the friendship between Riyo and her best friend, Kana.

What we ultimately learned in trying to combine history and fiction was that as long as we stayed true the essential spirit of the stories, we could strike the delicate balance and still tell a good story. PICTURE BRIDE is historically based, but ultimately, it is an artistic interpretation of history. Hopefully, we have succeeded in creating a film that stirs the imagination and leaves some questions unanswered, encouraging viewers to find out more on their own.

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Matsuji (Akira Takayama) reflects on the challenges of marriage

Matsuji (Akira Takayama) reflects on the challenges of marriage
When we finally premiered the film in Hawai'i in 1995, we felt great joy and relief at having arrived at the end of a long and difficult journey. But we also experienced unexpected feelings of sadness and loss. Much of what we had tried to capture in the film was gone: many of the picture brides who had been interviewed had passed on; Waialua Sugar Company, where we shot principal photography, had announced its last harvest; Ha-ma-kua Sugar Company, where we re-shot the cane-burning scene, had already been closed for over a year; the old cane worker's house in Kawaialoa Camp that had served as the film's production office and the house that was Riyo and Matsuji's shack in the film, had been razed.

Director/co-writer Kayo Hatta (center) with producers Diane Mark and Lisa Onodera

Director/co-writer Kayo Hatta (center) with producers Diane Mark and Lisa Onodera
The day after the Hawai'i premiere, my producers Diane Mark and Lisa Onodera and I revisited Kawaialoa Camp. Walking around the closed plantation, it was difficult to figure out where our production buildings had once stood. We realized that the site might one day be a golf course, and that the only canefields that future generations would see might be in films like PICTURE BRIDE. As the late afternoon sun was setting over Hale'iwa, we listened to the sound of the night winds picking up, blowing through the canefields, and gave thanks to all the people who had helped us preserve a precious part of Hawai'i's past.


Kayo Hatta was born in Mo-'ili'ili, Hawai'i and raised in New York. She graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in English and from U.C.L. A. with an M.F.A. in film production. Hatta directed and co-wrote PICTURE BRIDE, her first feature film.


Glossary
hole hole bushi: (ho-lei ho-lei boo-shee) songs that Japanese women cane workers sang while at work in the fields. "Hole hole" describes the work of stripping cane leaves from the stalks and was usually done by women. "Bushi" is the Japanese word for song. Though initially sung by women, the songs were later sung by men as well.

yoishare: (yoy-shah-dey) when a "hole hole bushi" was sung by a fellow worker, the other workers responded as a chorus with an encouraging and rousing "yoishare! yoishare!" While there is no real translation of this, a close approximation might be "that's it! keep it going!" hoe hana: the work of weeding the canefields with a hoe. "Hana" is the Hawaiian word for "work." luna: Hawaiian for plantation overseer