Asayo Murakami: The Last Picture BrideBelieved to have been Canada's last picture bride, this story covers the milestones in Asayo Murakami's life, from leaving Japan for Canada in 1924, to her passing in Calgary at the age of 104. by Kojiro (John) Iuchi Mrs. Murakami, named Asayo because of her birth in the early morning (asa), was from a privileged background and trained to be a teacher. She married a man from a prominent Hiroshima family named Ishibashi
Family lore had it that the matriarch of the family came to Canada as a picture bride. They knew little of Asayo's first husband. It was said he had abandoned his wife and taken their two daughters, ages 4 and 6, to live behind the gates of the Imperial Palace. A researcher hired for the documentary, Obachan's Garden*, discovered the couple had divorced in June, 1923.
On exchange of photographs, Asayo came to Canada as a picture bride in 1924, after agreeing to marry a man here named, Murakami. So, on April 27, 1924, she boarded the steamer, Iyo Maru, with dozens of other picture brides as a third-class passengers. Among her few belongings was a prized violin and a photograph of her daughters. Her immigration papers listed her occupation as wife and her object in going to Canada as: "To join my husband." She arrived on May 27 to be met by a short man for whom she was not attracted to in person. "This man from the picture, as soon as I saw his face, I knew he was not my type," Mrs. Murakami says in Japanese in the documentary. "I didn't even want to look at him," she stated. She broke her marriage contract on the spot. It would take three long years of working in a fish cannery, and picking strawberries in the fields, before Mrs. Murakami saved $250 to repay her short-lived husband-to-be for the cost of her voyage.
A matchmaker later introduced Asayo to Otokichi Murakami, a tall widower with two children of his own. (His family name was coincidentally the same as that of her rejected suitor). They settled in Steveston, BC, a fishing village south of Vancouver in what is now suburban Richmond. Mrs. Murakami became known among her neighbors for her stunning flower garden. She soon gave birth to a son, who was named George, after the reigning monarch. Seven more children were born, all living on the money her husband made as a master boat builder. In Canada, she was forced to surrender her property, and her freedom, in 1942 because of her ethnic heritage. The Murakami family, along with many others of Japanese ancestry, were evicted from their homes. Eight members of the Murakami family wound up working on a Manitoba sugar-beet farm, laboring at 50 cents an hour. When restrictions on their movement were lifted in 1949, the parents joined their eldest daughter on a potato farm in Rainier, Alberta. After her husband died in 1969, Mrs. Murakami lived on her own for 27 years before entering a nursing home. In 1992, she was introduced to Prince and Princess Takamado of the Japanese Imperial family during their visit to Lethbridge, Alberta. To mark her 100th birthday, Mrs. Murakami's offspring returned to the old family home in Steveston and planted a flower garden in her honor. The site is now part of the Britannia Heritage Shipyard Park. In 2001, the remarkable story of her life was told in a National Film Board documentary directed by her granddaughter. Linda Ohama began filming her documentary to mark the 100th birthday of her obachan, a Japanese term of endearment for an older woman, especially a grandmother. Despite her advanced age, Mrs. Murakami was an energetic subject and her colorful recollections are the highlight of the film.
As the filmmaker delved into Mrs. Murakami's life, she revealed details of her grandmother's life that were unknown to the rest of the family. Among those were the death of an infant son, and a bitter squabble with in-laws in Japan that forced her to leave her native land. Meanwhile, Ms. Ohama learned the fate of the two girls left in Japan. They were sent to separate families after their paternal grandmother died in 1926, about two years after their mother left for Canada. The eldest daughter, Fumiko Sogou, had died in 1996. The younger daughter, Chieko Nishida, was found and told about the sister she did not remember, and a large family of half-brothers and half-sisters across the Pacific that she could not have imagined. She had grown up believing her parents had been killed in the 1923 earthquake. Mother and daughter were finally reunited in Canada, an emotional scene captured in Obachan's Garden. On their reunion, Chieko said, "This dream... why didn't it come sooner?" Mrs. Murakami, born in the 19th century, was witness to the first years of the 21st. In the first half of her life, she believed the emperor of her homeland to be a living god, and mourned the destruction by atomic bomb of a city (Hiroshima) near which she had once lived. Asayo Murakami, homemaker and farm laborer; born in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, on February 15, 1898; died at the age of 104 in Calgary, Alberta on December 21, 2002. She leaves nine children, 21 grandchildren, 57 great-grandchildren, and five great-great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by four children, including an infant son, and her second husband, Otokichi Murakami, who died in 1969. She was believed to have been the last living picture bride in Canada.
*The Anglicized Obachan, as referred to in this article is, more correctly, the Japanese word Obaachan, with the first "a" accented with a marcon "¯" accent. However, the film Obachan's Garden is spelled with one unaccented "a," so I chose this version to avoid confusion. |
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