The picture bride phenomenon: A reflection on photography from a cultural perspective in Yoshiko Uchida’s Picture Bride

Abstract

Literature and photography have always encouraged critics to explore interactions between text and image. Within the scope of culture, they also show significant potential in terms of their scholarly application, since the photograph becomes a practical tool for studying literary works within the cultural matrix. The paper aims to use this means of visualisation in order to examine the picture bride phenomenon illustrated in Yoshiko Uchida’s novel Picture Bride (1987), which reveals that behind the veil of apparently prosperous and lifelong marriages, there is a harsh matchmaking system which—solely on the basis of personal networking and Japanese marriage intermediaries—allows for shipping prospective wives from Japan to Japanese immigrants who settled in the United States a few decades earlier. Thus, the photograph constitutes a tool of analysis, which doubles as a tangible means of representation and a factual visualisation of metacognitive imagery.