Lately there have been a lot of photos of Asian (Chinese and Japanese mostly) weddings running through my in-box. Generally they center around some strange mode of transportation used to carry the bride and groom.
Some are meant to be funny like the above, but many are standard wedding portraits. In all of them, the Groom looks positively giddy with happiness, while the Bride looks some shade of angry to miserable.
Is this a cultural norm for the wedding photos? Like early photos in the USA where nobody smiled? Or is it just a weird coincidence of the photos that end up on the interweb? Are Asian brides still often pushed to marry someone they don’t like, or don’t know well?
I’d be pretty surprised to find out any significant number of Japanese women are pressured into marrying someone they don’t want to.
In my very small sample size of 5 or 6 families I know in Japan the women are no pushovers. They may allow the husbands to play it up in public on occasion but at home they have at least 50% of the say about what happens, often quite a bit more.
As for the goofy transportation all I can say is I WISH we did that. When I got married in Kyoto I hobbled around for what seemed like miles on a tightly wrapped broken ankle.
It may be this. An example from a movie probably doesn’t count for much, but in the wedding scene in Bend It Like Beckham the very happy British-born Indian bride is instructed not to smile because “Indian brides never smile, you’ll ruin the bloody video!”
Asia is a big country after all. The rickshaw photo is Japanese and the forklift is Chinese.
At least in China, there is a tendancy to have a fancy car for the wedding. usually a BMW or Benz but can be whacky like the forklift. I’m betting the couple worked at the forklift factory.
As for pressured into marriage, I think you are generally decades if not centuries out of date. Sure, it can happen but depends on where (that Asia is a big country thing). Just like one can get “pressured” in the US.
Re: That jinrikisha (second photo) with the Japanese couple. I think using that mode of transportation is unusual for a Japanese wedding, although it might be a regional thing that I’m unaware of. As to the scowling face, as my wife will tell you, the wedding wig and headdress hurt like a bastard. Smiling is very difficult for someone with a low pain threshold.
