Arrival by Chino Otsuka. Photograph with archival image (NNM 2001-28-2-4: A picture bride photo of Kinori Oka).| Photo courtesy of Nikkei National Museum.

“I was a picture bride when I came to Victoria in 1907,” Koto Kawamoto tells us in her 1958 memoir The Way of Endurance. “As I left behind all that I knew in Japan, I had many thoughts of what life had in store for me in a new land.”

Kawamoto’s story is one of several shared accounts that are given a voice in the upcoming art exhibit entitled Chino Otsuka: Arrival. This new audio-visual installation by award-winning writer and photographer Chino Otsuka opens on Saturday, June 11 at the Nikkei National Museum in Burnaby.

London-based Otsuka chose the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre for her 2014 research residency as a finalist of Canada’s prestigious AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize. Her stay in Vancouver directly inspired the current exhibit.

Throughout her career, Otsuka has employed photography and video to explore the fluid relationship between memory, time and photography. At age 10 she moved from Japan to the United Kingdom to attend the progressive co-educational boarding school Summerhill. The experience of growing familiar with a new environment, culture and a different language while developing her adolescent identity profoundly shaped her work in photography, video and writing.

Likewise, the city resonated with her in many ways. “Vancouver has thriving East Asian communities and at the same time still retains some of the Britishness and this mixture is great for someone who has been going back and forth between Japan and the UK,” says Otsuka. “Walking around Vancouver I recognized familiar landscapes from [Jeff Wall’s] photography…artists like [him] had a large influence on my work when I was studying photography.”

Accounts of hope and hardship that need to be more widely shared

Chino Otsuka, artist.| Photo by Nori Mizuguchi.

“I read and came across so many moving stories during the research,” says Otsuka. “I knew very little about the history of Japanese immigrants in Canada, or the hardships and injustices that they suffered.”

One group especially caught her attention.

“As my research progressed, I became more and more interested in the stories of ‘picture brides,’ young Japanese women usually between 17 and 20 years old, who came to Canada in the early 20th century,” says Otsuka.

The personal risks they took were enormous, explains Otsuka, as their marriages were arranged by simply showing the prospective bride and groom photographs of each other. Most of these Japanese young women saw their new husbands for the first time once they arrived in Canada.

The pivotal moment of arrival

Otsuka was touched by the fate of these women and was drawn to their innocence, ambition and courage. Their journey was a longing for a new life in a new country. However, life in Canada was very different from what they had imagined. In most cases they faced unexpected hardships that often resulted in tragedies.

“They struggled and endured throughout their lives,” says Otsuka.

In her installation the narration of original transcripts from several generations of Japanese Canadian women is accompanied by four diptych, or paired, images.

“The work focuses on their journey and evoking a sense of anticipation, as well as their dreams and longing, around the brief moment in their lives when they arrived in the new country,” says Otsuka.

The exhibit will open with a talk from Otsuka herself, and will include panels and workshops throughout its duration.

For further info, visit www.centre.nikkeiplace.org.

Chino Otsuka at work.| Photo by Nori Mizuguchi.