When sansei Canadian filmmaker Linda
Ohama set out to make a film that would celebrate her grandmother’s life on the
eve of her 100th birthday, she had no idea just how far her journey
would take her. On the surface, there
was more than enough material to make a feature-length documentary for her obāchan (grandma) had lived an extraordinary life in Canada. Yet during the filming of Obāchan’s Garden (2001), the Murakami family discovers that the
matriarch of the family has been keeping a painful secret about her early life
in Japan for over 70 years.
Asayo Murakami
(1898-2002) was born in Onomichi, Hiroshima Perfecture in 1898. Her parents had named her Asayo because she
was born in early in the morning (asa). For her Canadian family, Asayo’s story began
in 1924 when she came to Canada as a “picture bride”. A man named Murakami had selected Asayo’s
photograph as a potential future wife and paid for her journey to British Columbia. Unfortunately, upon meeting Mr. Murakami,
Asayo immediately rejected the possibility of marrying this short statured man. She worked for three years in a fish cannery
and picking strawberries to pay the man back the $250 dollars he had spent on
her.
Not long after this a matchmaker
introduced her to the fishing boat craftsman Otokichi Murakami (of no relation to the man she had turned down) – a tall widower with two young children. Asayo agreed to this marriage and the couple settled
in the village of Steveston, which today belongs to the city of Richmond,
British Columbia. They went on to have 8
children of their own and Asayo was known locally for her wide social circle
and her beautiful flower garden. While
most women filled their gardens with more practical crops of fruit and
vegetables, Asayo preferred flowers – a sentimental preference which was
connected to her private sorrows.
Like the other Japanese families
living in coastal British Columbia, the Murakamis were forced to leave their
home during World War II and were relocated to a sugar-beet farm in
Manitoba. After the war restrictions were
lifted, the couple joined their eldest daughter and her family on their potato farm
in Rainier, Alberta. These were difficult times for the family
Linda Ohama pieces together the life
of her obāchan like a quilt. Fragments of recollections by obāchan herself, Ohama’s mother and
siblings, Ohama’s daughter, and other friends and relatives are woven together
with a collection of family photos, archival footage from Japan and Canada, and dramatic reenactments
of the past with the filmmaker’s cousin Natsuko
Ohama playing obāchan in her
younger years. Docudrama elements in
documentaries are a common, and sometimes controversial, feature in Canadian
documentaries and may not be to everyone’s taste – but as the Murakami family
had to leave everything behind when they left Steveston, the reenacted
sequences bring colour and life to the home that obāchan loved best outside of Onomichi.
The film keeps coming back to one of
obāchan’s prized possessions: a beautiful
photograph of two smartly dressed little girls.
The secret that obāchan has
kept for all these years is that before she came to Canada she was married to a
man from a prominent family called Ishibashi.
For reasons that are unclear, around the time of the Great Kantō
earthquake, Asayo was divorced from her husband and he took their daughters to
live on the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Asayo has been unable to trace her children,
but has always believed that they were safe because they lived near the emperor
and his family.
The discovery of obāchan’s secret changes the course from a mere celebration of
Asayo’s life to a quest to find out what happened to these two long-lost
daughters. At this point, according to the director's online diary, Ohama brought the National Film Board of Canada on board to help with funding and she set off to Japan
with her mother and daughter – the first time the three women have been to
visit obāchan’s family there. It is a complicated journey, with many
unexpected twists and turns, but it certainly makes riveting viewing.
Also interwoven with the story of obāchan is the story of her former home
in Steveson. The Murakami home and boat
works, where they lived from 1929-1942 were the only buildings belonging to the
Japanese to survive into the 1990s. As
they prepare for obāchan’s birthday,
the family are involved in the restoration of the property which is now a part
of the Britannia
Heritage Shipyard Site in Richmond.
The film also documents the family’s restoration of the garden, which
they plant according to obāchan’s
instructions in preparation for the opening of the Murakami Visitor Centre in
May 1998.
Is Linda Ohama able to track down obāchan’s daughters and is it possible
for frail obāchan to travel to
British Columbia from her nursing home in Alberta to see her garden in its
restored glory? You can enjoy the
emotional ending of the film yourself on the NFB website:
Since making this documentary Linda
Ohama (リンダ・オオハマ/official profile) has
developed strong ties between Canada and Japan.
She is currently in Japan on a lecture tour and is active in Tohoku region recovery efforts through her Canada-Tohoku-Japan Cloth Letters project.
To learn more about obāchan read:
Asayo Murakami: The
Last Picture Bride and The Story of Ms. Asayo
Murakami by family friend Kojiro “John”
Iuchi
