Picture Brides and Japanese Immigration

In 1907 the United States made the Gentleman’s Agreement with Japan. This agreement severely limited the number of Japanese immigrants allowed into the United States, but there was a loophole. The agreement allowed Japanese women to immigrate if they were the wives of US residents. As the majority of Japanese Americans at the time were young men, enterprising matchmakers set up a system where clients could choose a wife from photographs of single Japanese women willing to move to the US. Women who immigrated through this system came to be known as picture brides. 

Picture brides made up the vast majority of Japanese immigrants between 1907 and 1924. By 1920 over 10,000 picture brides had moved to the continental US. Over 15,000 additional brides moved to the US territory of Hawaii.

Many women chose to become picture brides to escape poverty, but they did so at great personal risk. Most picture brides did not speak or read English. Many were shocked when their new husbands were much older and poorer than they anticipated. Most picture brides had to find paid work because their husbands did not make enough money to support their families. Some picture brides were lured into abusive marriages or forced into prostitution. Because anti-Asian sentiment was widespread, all of the brides faced racial discrimination throughout their lives. Despite these challenges, picture brides played a crucial role in establishing the Japanese American community by birthing and raising the next generation of Japanese Americans.

Japan stopped issuing passports to picture brides by 1924 to demonstrate their commitment to controlling immigration to the US.

This image of US officials reviewing the passports of newly arrived picture brides was taken at Angel Island, an immigration station in San Francisco, California. After their passports were certified, the women met their husbands and took part in a group wedding. Wedding ceremonies had to take place immediately to ensure the brides’ legal right to enter the US. 

• Angel Island: A station used to process and detain immigrants entering the United States on the West Coast, similar to Ellis Island on the East Coast. It processed mainly East and South Asian immigrants.
• matchmakers: People who arrange marriages.

• APUSH Connection: 6.8: Immigration and Migration in the Gilded Age
• Pair this image with Mira Edson Kohler’s article criticizing the Expatriation Act, another immigration-related policy enacted in 1907. Discuss how both the Expatriation Act and the Gentleman’s Agreement created unique challenges for women by linking immigration and citizenship to marriage.
• Learn more about anti-Asian immigration policy. Compare the Chinese Exclusion Act with the 1907 Gentleman’s Agreement by linking this photograph to the life stories of Edith Maude Eaton and Linda Moy Chin, as well as to accounts of women and families in the curriculum guide Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion.
• Consider how Asian immigrants resisted racist immigration restrictions in this era. Compare the Japanese picture bride system with that of Chinese paper sons and daughters, which is described in detail in the curriculum guide Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion (see Resource 18). How did each system work around immigration policy? What do these systems tell us about attitudes toward Asian immigration?
• The practice of importing brides to North America to build community was not unique to Japanese Americans. To learn more, explore Marrying into the New World, The Casket Girls, and Tobacco Brides for a larger lesson on the role women played in establishing different communities in North America.

IMMIGRATION, MIGRATION, AND SETTLEMENT

• For more about restrictions on Asian immigration and Angel Island, see Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion.