Q & A with KAYO HATTA : The Protector of the ‘Picture Bride’s’ Stories

Between 1908 and 1924, more than 20,000 women who left Japan for Hawaii did so as “picture brides,” betrothed to Japanese sugar plantation workers. They were the Issei--the first generation of laborers who dreamed of building a better life in America.

Today, three generations later, the Issei are in their 90s and only a handful of the picture brides survive. Their story is being told in a movie six years in the making and financed in its early phases through grants and donations.

“Picture Bride,” written and directed by Kayo Hatta, was first shown at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. After Miramax Films spent more than $500,000 on post-production, a revised soundtrack and re-shooting two scenes, it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won this year’s Audience Award. The film opens in limited release Friday.

Hatta, 37, was interviewed by Times Staff Writer Gail S. Tagashira.

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Question: When you first talked to those real-life picture brides in 1989, were they surprised that someone was interested in their lives?

Answer: Oh, yeah. They were amused. They would giggle and ask, “Why would you want to know about my life?” But Barbara Kawakami, who’s doing a book on picture brides, paved the way and was able to get them to open up with very intimate details of their life, like their sex life.

Some of them were very funny: “I keep the door locked ‘cause you know how he wanna have one more and he keep banging on the door. . . .” It was wonderful to get that view of them because few of us, even with our own grandmothers, get to ask them those kind of questions.

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Q: Speaking of grandmothers, the character of Riyo (played by Youki Kudoh) reminded me of my own Maui grandmother, who was strong-willed, vain at times and often insisted on her own way. Not your stereotypical shy, quiet Japanese wife.

A: That’s what I wanted to bring out. It’s boring and flattens the dimensionality of characters if they are total villains or total saints. The challenge in any film--and what had disappointed me about so many portrayals of Asians in the media--is they’re so simplistic. During several drafts of the script, someone said, “She’s not really likable at all. She’s a spoiled brat,” and I pulled back a little bit. Maybe I was going overboard in making her so strong and stubborn.

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Q: How many women is the character of Riyo based on?

A: It’s hard to count. After you read so much, interview these women and draw from your own family history . . . it’s hard to tell. But her personality was inspired by my maternal grandmother (not a picture bride), who was the wife of a Buddhist minister.

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Q: What did you feel, as a Sansei (third generation), to be depicting the women of your grandmother’s generation?

A: It became my obsession. In a protective sense, I was determined to be the protector of these women’s stories. No one was going to mess with their stories, no one was going to water them down by telling me to make this film more commercially appealing. It’s so easy to distort their stories and I felt I was entrusted to preserve their integrity.

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Q: It was startling how authentic everything looked and sounded. Most of what was plantation life is gone. Was it an effort to find what you had to have?

A: We had advisers and we paid a lot of attention to those little details by relying on old photographs, books from that era, which is pretty well-documented. Barbara Kawakami was a consultant and for her book on plantation clothing, she had done a lot of the research and was able to give us the finer points down to how the headgear should be wrapped.

One of the most amazing moments was shooting on the first day in the cane fields. We were waiting for the actors when suddenly the crew looks up and a whole row of women walk down in their costumes. It was like history coming to life. Everybody became really quiet because it was so cool to see them. They were totally authentically dressed. Then we positioned them and they started singing. . . . That was really amazing.

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Q: Did you find it easy to locate sites for filming?

A: Initially we wanted a plantation where there were a lot of old existing structures. That would have cut production costs rather than us having to build, but it was difficult. A lot of them have been remodeled and upgraded and they look too nice. Conditions in the plantations have really improved because of the unions.

We had a difficult time finding a plantation that not only had the right look but also would allow us to shoot on the grounds because of the huge liability problems, especially if the plantation is still operating. These huge 2-ton trucks come barreling down those small cane-haul roads. They can’t stop on a dime.

We had a lot of convincing to do, but at the Wailua Plantation a couple of people who were interested in the project from their family’s view thought it was exciting that we were doing it. They managed to convince the company to let us shoot there. We were lucky.

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Q: What made you decide to start shooting when you had only half of your budget in hand?

A: That was very calculated risk but our idea was to shoot this gorgeous footage to show investors and get the rest of the money. We knew midway into production that we were going to run out of money but at that point (the summer of 1993) we just had to do it after five years of fund-raising and working on the script. We had to use the momentum. We got a great cast together and we had to shoot during the dry season, which is summertime. Everything was saying “Go for it,” even though we didn’t have all our money. Midway through production, we didn’t know where our next dollar was going to come from.

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Q: And that’s when Youki Kudoh came to the rescue?

A: She called the president of the dress and lingerie company in Japan that she models for, and it was like “Dialing for Dollars.” She wouldn’t hang up until he said yes, and, in a way, she had a lot invested in it--she’s the star of the film. She convinced him to invest $600,000 and that allowed us to borrow money from our relatives until their money came through.

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Q: I know he has a home in Hawaii, but how did you get Toshiro Mifune on board?

A: I wrote him a very flattering fan letter. Not like a pitch, but I told him it would be appropriate for him to play the benshi (silent film narrator) because “the benshi were legends and you are the legend of today.”

Mifune had already appeared at the Hawaii Film Festival, and we tried to tap into that. When he didn’t write back, we realized it was a pretty ridiculous thought. Then out of the blue, his son called and said his father was interested in playing the part. We were terrified because it’s that whole thing about be careful about what you wish for. We were such a low-budget production, we could barely afford lunches for our crew much less a hotel and first-class airfare for someone like Mifune. But the folks in Hawaii were so excited, they helped with that part.