Memoirs of a Geisha : a mirror of Japan in the Mind of America ?

Posté par admin
jeudi 02 mars 2006 [n° 1107]

The film Memoirs of a Geisha is co-produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Rob Marshall (director of Chicago).

Synopsis

“Geisha” tells the story of a young girl from a Japanese fishing village who is sold into slavery at a Kyoto geisha house in 1929. She eventually is allowed to become a geisha — a woman trained in the arts of entertaining men — and rises to the top of her field. 1

The movie

Geisha
Directed by Rob Marshall
Produced by Lucy Fisher Steven Spielberg Douglas Wick

Cast

(character …. actor’s name)

Sayuri …. Zhang Ziyi
The Chairman …. Ken Watanabe
Mameha …. Michelle Yeoh
Hatsumomo …. Gong Li
Nobu Toshikazu …. Koji Yakusho
Pumpkin …. Youki Kudoh
Okiya Mother …. Kaori Momoi
Chiyo …. Suzuka Ohgo
Auntie …. Tsai Chin
The Baron …. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa
Dr. Crab …. Randall Duk Kim
Colonel Derricks …. Ted Levine
General …. Kenneth Tsang
Young Pumpkin …. Zoe Weizenbaum
Satsu …. Samantha Futerman
Korin …. Eugenia Yuan
Koichi …. Karl Yune
Granny …. Kotoko Kawamura
Bekku …. Thomas Ikeda
Kitonoyama …. Anthony Begonia

Music by John Williams
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Released December 9, 2005 (USA)
Running time 144 min.

Casting controversy : Some people were upset that central characters in the movie were not played by native Japanese actresses, notably that the lead role is played by a Chinese actress. It was called “a movie about Japanese played by Chinese, written by whites“. (source : Wikipedia)

Memoirs Of A Geisha: Lush And Evocative by Bambi Evans December 24, 2005

Trailers

U.S. Trailer (running time 2:33. English) Small (6.5MB) [Real Media]

U.S. Trailer (running time 2:33. English) Small (10.4MB) [Quicktime]

More Trailers and video clips on Michelle Yeoh’s website

Japanese Trailer “Memoirs of a Geisha” : Sayuri

Reviews


Memoirs of a Geisha The Urban Wire, Written by Sabrina Chew Li Mei, 16 January 2006


‘Geisha’ glam Film inspires upscale fashions and products with Asian flavor by Valli Herman; Los Angeles Times December 30, 2005

________________________

The story has less to do with Japan and more to do with a white American man’s fantasy of Japan

As a Japanese-born male who spent a greater part of my adult life in the United States, I’ve had a keen interest in portrayals of Japan and Asians in the American media. I believe that negative portrayals found in movies like Breakfast at Tiffany’s in the 1960s through the more recent Rising Sun and The Joy Luck Club help maintain prejudice against Asians, particularly Asian and Asian American men.

These images have contributed to the racism I’ve experienced personally ?? both the blatant kind (receiving “Jap, go home” telephone calls all night long for weeks) and the more subtle kind (a law professor insisting on calling me “Tanaka-san” while she called all the other students by their first names).

Memoirs from a JA Male Asian week By Tomoyuki Tanaka, Dec 29, 2005 2

“Geisha” : a mirror of Japan in the Mind of America ?

According to some critics :

1. the Geisha novel misrepresents its source. Mineko sued the racist American

2. the Geisha novel misrepresents itself as non-fiction to deceive readers.

3. the Geisha novel was written by a viciously racist white American man.

4. the Geisha novel’s author invented the fictitious diabolical
character “Dr. Crab” (a Japanese equivalent of Dr. Fu Manchu 3) to achive his ultimate goal: to promote anti-Japanese racism. (elaborated below) ”

Dr. Crab who enacts what one reviewer calls the ‘creepiest‘ scene in the whole book of deflowering Sayuri and storing some of her blood in a vial he enshrines with others […]”

5. in order to encourge American readers to identify with the main character in hating the Japanese, the Geisha novel’s main character has green eyes and is discriminated againt for it.

6. the Geisha novel presents “the almost pathological ugliness of almost all the men in the book”

(from a paper by Prof Allison of Duke University)

racist Geisha film by Spielberg? Tanaka

Relations between the United States and Japan and anti-japanese sentiment

“Relations between the United States and Japan strained in the 1930s over Japan’s foreign policy in China and the resulting failure of Roosevelt to invoke the neutrality act, only worsened in 1940 and 1941. In July 1940, the American government placed an embargo on all scrap iron, steel, high octane gasoline, and aviation lubrication oil going to Japan. On September 27, 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, making them allies. On January 7, 1941, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Joseph C. Grew in Tokyo warned his superiors, “There is a lot of talk around town to the effect that the Japanese, in case of a break with the U.S., are planning to go all out in a surprise mass attack at Pearl Harbor”

John W. Dower War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986; Pantheon; ISBN 0394751728)

World War II Before Pearl Harbor: American Music The authentic history center

I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire Performed by Horace Heidt and his Musical Knights, vocals by Larry Cotton and Donna and her Don Juans – Record: Columbia 36295

Anti-Japanese sentiment 4

Mineko Iwasaki : the true story of a Geisha (Geiko)

“What Golden refers to as ‘geisha,’ the women who are the subject of this story are usually called geiko in Japan, and these women don’t refer to themselves as ‘geisha,’ a more informal and slightly derogatory term (See Agence France Presse, 2005). In the Japanese translation, two words geisha and geiko (the formal reading is geigi) are used in the main text, while the book title was changed to Sayuri and the word geisha does not appear even as a subtitle”. [Tomoyuki Tanaka]

“Author Arthur Golden interviewed Iwasaki while researching his novel Memoirs of a Geisha. Iwasaki agreed to speak with Golden on the condition that her involvement would be kept confidential, but Golden revealed her identity by thanking her by name in the book’s acknowledgements. After Memoirs was published, Iwasaki received criticism and even death threats for violating the traditional geisha code of silence.

“After Mineko Iwasaki sued Golden for defamation and breach of contract, and her own book came out in 2002, it became apparent how Golden distorted her life story. In reality, she was treated much better by her colleagues and senior geiko, had more freedom about her life and future plans, and her mizuage involved no sex at all. Hating the backward ‘Japanese’ practices and hating Japanese men is a pleasure made acceptable in the reading of the novel because of its righteous appearance.” [Wikipedia] 5

Iwasaki felt betrayed by Golden’s use of information she considered confidential, and denounced Memoirs of a Geisha as being an inaccurate depiction of the life of a geiko. Iwasaki was particularly offended by the novel’s portrayal of geiko engaging in ritualized prostitution.”

Remaking a memoir With a new autobiography, former geisha Mineko Iwasaki seeks to reclaim a history she believes was tarnished in the best-selling novel Memoirs of a Geisha, article by Tamara Wieder


Q: What are the common misconceptions that you want to clear up?

A: The most common misconception is that geisha are somehow high-class courtesans, or prostitutes. And that is very much not the case. And also, geisha are not submissive and subservient, but in fact they are some of the most financially and emotionally successful and strongest women in Japan, and traditionally have been so.

Q: Why do you think these misconceptions got started?

A: The first reason that this happened, I believe, is that historically there were licensed pleasure quarters in Japan, and the women who worked there as courtesans and high-class prostitutes were in fact indentured; they were not even allowed to leave the area. And we, the artisans, the female entertainers, we were actually free to come in and leave the district. And our purposes were very different. We were there to entertain, and we never sold ourselves, our bodies, for money. That was not the purpose of what we did; that was what the other women did. And it was very clear in the licensing arrangements and the indenture arrangements [that] the two roles were very separate. And then in 1873, the pleasure quarters were actually outlawed, and it became illegal. And from that time, there has been a growing confusion about the nature of the two roles. I think that that is the basis of the confusion.

The second answer is because the world of the geisha, the “flower and willow world,” is a very separate society that is shrouded in mystery. The myths that have been created by outsiders about the environment and the lifestyle of the geisha world have pretty much been able to grow unchecked, in a way. And because it was very separate, and a very elitist world, and one that was supposed to be kept private, people were not particularly comfortable speaking about it.

__________________________

“Mémoires d’une Geisha” vu par la presse française

Geisha de rêve Finira-t-on un jour en Occident de fantasmer sur les fascinantes filles de l ’art du Japon ancestral ?«Mémoires d ’une geisha » joue la carte de beau mystère… , par Pierre-Louis Cereja, Alsapresse

MEMOIRES D’UNE GEISHA de Rob Marshall -2005 – Drame Avec Zhang Ziyi, Ken Watanabe, Koji Hakusho, Michelle Yeoh, Gong Li … critique de Cineasie : NOTE : 3.5/10

“Les critiques japonais comptent maints détails erronés dans ce grand spectacle et ne se privent pas de déplorer que des symboles de la féminité du pays du Soleil-Levant soient incarnés par les Chinoises Zhang Ziyi et Gong Li et la Malaisienne Michelle Yeoh. Mais ce sont les autorités chinoises qui l’ont interdit de sortie pour protester contre une distribution jugée dégradante. On estime scandaleux à Pékin que des actrices chinoises interprètent des courtisanes japonaises. On a oublié à Shanghaï que la cité fut le royaume de la prostitution. Les deux pays règlent surtout de vieilles rancunes nationalistes.”

“Mémoires d’une geisha” : fleurs japonaises à l’américaine Le Monde, 28.02.06


  1. “circa 1929, a widowed fisherman sells his daughters on the human market in Kyoto. The older girl, although hardly old enough for sex, is sold directly into prostitution, while the 9-year-old Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo) is sold to a geisha house where she will be an unpaid servant until it is determined if she is elegant enough for the house’s clientele.

    The house is run by Mother (Kaori Momoi), and its ruling geisha is Hatsumomo (Gong Li). Chiyo quickly becomes best friends with Pumpkin (Youki Kudoh), a girl about her age, and they are raised by the house under a strict discipline that trains them for a lifetime of flattering wealthy men. They learn that love has no role in this world (although Hatsumomo sets a bad example). Geisha lore hints that they do fall in love with clients, but the operative word is “client” and the love is not free. Nobody wants it to be — not the geisha, who is earning her living, or the client, who is using money to control a woman while maintaining his independence and, for that matter, to observe a distinction between his geisha and his wife.

    The key male in the story is the Chairman (Ken Watanabe), who first encounters Chiyo when she is a child, and suggests her to Mother. As Chiyo and her beauty grows, it becomes clear she may represent a threat to the dominance of Hatsumomo. The story resumes when she is in her mid-teens and is purchased from Mother by Mameha (Yeoh), Hatsumomo’s rival, whose master plan is to use her control of the younger girl to win control of Mother’s house away from Hatsumomo, who expects to inherit the reins. Hatsumomo in response acquires Pumpkin as her own proxy in the battle. It is amazing that a client stepping through their doors is not killed in the crossfire.

    Chiyo is renamed Sayuri, and is now played by Ziyi Zhang. The movie, almost like a tourist, prowls the geisha quarter of Kyoto, visits a sumo wrestling match and attends a dance performance where Sayuri stars. Then World War II intervenes (that is the best word for its role in the film), and in peacetime the Chairman now desperately needs Sayuri, who has always and still does love him, perhaps because he steered her as a child into the best geisha house. It suits him for Sayuri to become the friend of his colleague Nobu (Koji Yakusho), and there is great intrigue surrounding the auctioning of Sayuri’s virginity. ”

    Memoirs of a Geisha by Roger Ebert December 16, 2005
    [back]

  2. Tomoyuki Tanaka is an attorney living near San Francisco. The full article is published on his blog : Memoirs from a JA Male By Tomoyuki Tanaka, Dec 29, 2005 [back]
  3. Chronology of Dr. Fu Manchu and Sir Denis Nayland Smith by Win Scott Eckert [back]
  4. Anti-Japanese sentiment after Pearl Harbor : Confinement and Ethnicity: Japanese American Relocation – photo : On the Way to the Camps: A Photo Essay [back]
  5. Politically Correct Racism and the Geisha Novel – The Psychology of Sophisticated Racism Mirrors that of Ethnic Jokes by Tomoyuki Tanaka Attorney at Law [back]
Cinema, Japan, United States

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