The Woman Who Married a Photograph

She looks determined!

My mother didn't meet my father before she married him.

She married his photograph.

It was 1959. Yasuko was the fifth of six children, the most adventurous of the lot, growing up in rural Japan in a world that felt, by her own measure, suffocating. When word came that there was a Japanese Canadian man looking for a wife, good looking enough, from what she could tell (they exchanged letters) she didn't hesitate.

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My father, George, had crossed the Pacific in 1954 and built a life in Canada. But finding a wife here had proven... challenging. Too short, some said. Can't speak English. Too poor. The Japanese Canadian women he met weren't interested. So George did what any determined young man would do; he started asking around. Did any of the older ladies in the community have relatives back home?

Someone did.

There was just one problem. Japan was not about to let an unmarried woman travel halfway across the world to meet a strange man. So before Yasuko boarded that plane, there was a wedding ceremony in Japan; with George's photograph standing in as the groom.

Pictured above.

She arrived. He met her at the airport. And that's when she got the full picture of his height. (He was 5’-1” at the time).

She stayed anyway.

They settled in Toronto, though "settled" is generous. Yasuko quickly learned how welcome they were when a "for rent" sign that had mysteriously disappeared during their enquiry reappeared in the window a week later. No explanation needed. The message was clear.

But here they were. Two people who found each other across an ocean, committing to a marriage through a photograph, against considerable odds.

I think about that whenever I feel like the path forward isn't clear. My mother left everything familiar at 24 for a life she couldn't fully picture. My father refused to take no for an answer.

I come from that.