The Buddha in the Attic

The term “picture bride” refers to the Japanese women who, with the assistance of professional matchmakers, came to America to marry single men from the Japanese diaspora. The name references the misleading photographs of future husbands the matchmakers used to lure the women to America. In reality, these women traveled on multiple boats to US Pacific ports in San Francisco and Hawaii, but Otsuka condenses this phenomenon into the experiences of women on a single voyage. This renders the heterogeneous group of women, who range from “delicate and fair” Kyoto girls who have “lived [their] entire lives in darkened rooms at the back of the house” to “farmers’ daughters from Yamaguchi with thick wrists and broad shoulders” (7), into a generational group who have enough in common to speak in a first-person plural voice. Otsuka enhances this impression by portraying the voyage as a community of women who influence each other through the exchange of stories and advice. However, the novel also juxtaposes the women’s universal experience of mentally preparing for life in America with the idiosyncratic thoughts and actions of individuals. For example, there are women who subvert the norm by sexually experimenting with each other, and others who arrange secret assignations with boathands.