Hardships and Harmony in Hawaii

We all have to acclimate to changes and accept them, despite all the hardships, a theme the film "Picture Bride" looks at throughout the story. Set in the 1918, a young woman, Riyo, after the death of her father, is arranged by her aunt to become a picture bride, a practice in which immigrant workers in Hawaii and the West Coast and the United States selected brides from their native countries via a matchmaker through using only photographs and family recommendations. Through this, Riyo is paired with a man who works as a field hand on a sugar cane plantation in Hawaii. When she arrives, she meets the man she saw in the photograph she was shown, and he is not what she expected him to look like; an aged version of the man in the picture. After a wedding ceremony, she is taken to her new home, the sugar plantation. Upon arrival, Riyo hears faint singing in the wind and hears it from time to time throughout.

The next day, she is given an ID tag to wear around her neck, and goes to work in the fields for the first time. Here she is beginning to be known for being a "city girl", as she is not used to farm work and slows the other workers down. But here, she learns of how the women canefield workers treat each other, as they are friendly and treat each other like family, and they take care of each other. Eventually, she makes an amiable friendship with Kana, another young picture bride who had arrived several years before, and helps her out with her side business of doing laundry for the workers. During all this time, Matsuji, Riyo's husband, had been having a hard time getting to know Riyo and such, and Kana gives him advice at how to make her happy.

Later on, the women who work in the field's leader, Yayoi, leaves with her family to Honolulu, and as she is leaving, she asks Kana to take care and charge of the other women caneworkers. And with this newfound leadership, Kana tries to tell Antone, the man that oversees the workers, to bring them closer to their children as they move from field to field, and fails after being threatened. And momentarily after, the cane fields are set on fire for harvesting before the women can retrieve their children. In the process, Kana loses her daughter, and both are lost in the fire after she goes to search for her.

Following the rest of the film, Riyo continues to hear the sound of a woman singing in the canefield, and one night, she follows this voice to find Kana in the early morning walking among the shoreline rocks. Riyo wants to go back to Japan with her, but Kana brings up a point to her about not leaving, gives her nametag and her leadership to her. The next day, Riyo begins to sing in the fields, just like Yayoi and Kana. In the end, Matsuji gives a gift to Riyo of an altar, so she can honor her parents as she did not have the change to do so before. And an older Riyo, narrating, says how she still hears a woman signing, but realizes it