Memoirs of a Geisha

I dragged Yung to watch Memoirs of a Geisha last night. The movie was just as compelling as the book which I'd first read 5 years ago. The opening scenes showing 2 young girls, Sayuri (the main character) and her older sister of an impoverished fishing family sold into slavery by their father to a renowned geisha house. I don't think the movie makes clear that once these girls are sold into a geisha house, they are either forced into prostitution (as was the fate of Sayuri's older sister)or trained as a maiko to one day become a geisha. Through the main character's eyes, we are given a backstage view of the ancient and secretive geisha district, Gion, and of the lives of the women who learn and practice the rigorous arts of the geisha. Behind its facade of haunting beauty the district turns out to be a viciously competitive place where women vie desperately for men's favor and largess, where a young girl's virginity is auctioned off to the highest bidder, where personal trust is almost nonexistent, and where no woman can afford even to dream about love or happiness.

When Yung and I were in Japan for our honeymoon, we actually went to Kyoto and to the district of Gion to "find some geishas' as Yung puts it. Gion has evolved into a large modern city however its geisha district still remains traditional with its bamboo and wooden houses. We did see some geishas, and for a brief moment we acted like the paparazzi chasing them down through some laneways for snapshots of them in their kimonos and white face. The real life geishas are quite coy and cautious about having their photos taken (probably been chase by too many tourists!). I can't imagine how the lifestyle of geishas would continue in the future. Their art and function seems so old world and their relevance in the modern Japanese society have been marginalised by the fact that Japanese men are no longer forced into passionless arranged marriages and Japanese women are no longer uneducated and docile for a geisha to fill the void.