Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip features Chiaki Foster, a Japanese ‘war bride’, reflecting on aspects of her life, intercut with interviews with her husband and daughter and scenes of her playing bingo. She and her husband speak with regret about the decision not to teach their children Japanese. Her daughter says that in the past her mother was isolated while her father socialised, but that now the situation is reversed. Foster’s shrine to her dead mother, about whom she feels much guilt, is shown. She says she is part Christian, part Shinto and part Buddhist, and is a ‘dinky-di Aussie’.

Educational value points

• After the Second World War, the up to 800 Japanese women who had married Australian occupation personnel found it difficult to have their marriages fully recognised by Australian civil authorities. Initially, marriage between Australians based in Japan and Japanese women had been prohibited by Australian military authorities. Many therefore married in secret; some were shunned by their families. From 1949 Japanese wives were permitted entry to Australia.

• Japanese women in Foster’s situation faced exceptional problems of isolation when they arrived in Australia. With barely 200 Japanese people living in Australia when she arrived in the country, and letters the only way of contacting family in Japan, there were few opportunities to speak Japanese. This cultural isolation was intensified by anti-Japanese feeling in Australia, partly the result of the treatment of Australian prisoners of war by Japanese military forces.

• While it is clear from this clip that Foster and her husband deeply regret not teaching their children Japanese, there were understandable reasons for not doing so at that time. The White Australia policy that was in place when their daughters were young reflected the intolerance of other races by many in Australia. Trade with an impoverished Japan only started in 1957, so the language may also have seemed to have had little value outside the family.

• The isolation felt by Japanese war brides was intensified by the circumstances of being a woman in Australian society at the time, as can be seen in this clip. At a time when married women were not expected to work and custom tended to separate men and women in social situations, women’s lives focused on the family and depended on connections with other women and extended families, connections these Japanese women did not have.

• Responsibility to family and particularly the responsibility to care for and to honour parents reflects the Confucian aspect of Japanese tradition and partly explains the intense sense of guilt that Foster feels for leaving her mother. The shrine to her mother and the prayers she says suggest a religious dimension to her sense of obligation.

• The clip suggests that Foster has gradually come to feel that she is an Australian. The daughter’s comment that her parents’ social roles are now reversed, and the scenes of Foster playing bingo, suggest that her isolation has been overcome. While her past depression and her sorrow for her mother are poignant reminders of her struggle, the clip, ending with her saying she is a ‘dinky-di Aussie’, implies that she has developed a sense of belonging in Australia.