Ronal Takaki Chapter 10- Pacific Crossings

Chapter ten of Ronald Takaki’s “A Different Mirror” which is entitled Pacific Crossings (seeking the land of money trees). In this chapter we learn more about both the Chinese and Japanese people who were migrating from their native lands over to the United States.
The story begins with the telling of how Chinese people were making their way across the ocean in hope of finding a better place to live, work, and raise a family. The Chinese immigrants who were in America had a surprisingly high rate of theft and alcoholism. After seeing these results of the Chinese were being represented the Japanese decided to put a restraint over the type of people that they would let come to America and represent them as people. The Japanese arranged it so that upstanding citizens who were male and even more who were female would have an opportunity to come to America. They reestablished the Meiji dynasty, and the ruler of the dynasty declared that boys and girls would go to school side by side learning the same things. This gave more of an opportunity to Japanese women, while the Chinese population which is primarily a male dominated population continued not to give women an increase in any level or type of respect. Another way some Japanese women were allowed to come to America were picture marriages. In those cases the bride and groom to be would exchange pictures and if everything was approved by their families they would get married. This action gave a lot more women the chance to leave Japan for a better life in America. After reaching America many of the women did not just work as house wives, but many held regular jobs and even worked in the fields just as men did. They had been able to do this since many of them had worked in Japan in the industrial labor force making up nearly half of the industrial workforce in the 1940’s.
The question of this chapter I would want to ask is how the Japanese women were able to marry someone whom they had never met but only seen in pictures.It’s a part of Japanese and Chinese cultures in the most part to have arranged marriages by their parents. The only thing is that I couldn’t began to understand how you could marry let alone stay married and have love for someone you never knew that well an wasn’t your first choice or any choice at all to be married to for the rest