Miscues of 'Geisha' Help Sell Film in Japan

WSJ.com - By GINNY PARKER WOODS and MIHO INADA : "Flaunt the fantasy. Kimonos wrapped wrong? Hair too windblown? Actresses the wrong nationality? Well, the movie ads trumpet, this is a "Japan that the Japanese will envy," playing up the Western flavor by printing "Japan" in the Roman alphabet rather than the country's traditional characters.

The idea, says Taro Yurikusa, a producer with Buena Vista International's Tokyo office, is to pique Japanese curiosity about how America -- and in particular Hollywood -- interprets Japan.

The movie, made by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a unit of Sony Corp., is the story of a Kyoto geisha -- a woman trained in traditional Japanese arts to make her a refined companion -- and of her unrequited love for a wealthy businessman. In Japan, movie posters don't use the same the sultry photo as they do in the U.S., featuring Chinese star Zhang Ziyi with hair whipping around her face. That's too un-geisha-like: The Japanese photos show Ms. Zhang in her slightly Westernized version of the geisha's traditional dress.

But Buena Vista, which had an even touchier job when it marketed the blockbuster war movie "Pearl Harbor" here in 2001, says it didn't make any changes to the movie itself. For "Pearl Harbor," a movie about Japan's attack on the U.S. during World War II, Buena Vista toned down potentially offensive bits of dialogue.

A Buena Vista spokesperson in Japan says the company expects the movie to gross 2 billion to 2.5 billion yen ($16.8 million to $21 million), which is modest for Japan -- one of the biggest market for Hollywood movies outside North America. Other Hollywood movies about Japan have done well here, including "The Last Samurai," which came out in 2003 and grossed 13.7 billion yen. "Pearl Harbor" grossed 7 billion yen.

So far, Buena Vista's strategy of marketing "Memoirs" as an outsider's view of Japanese culture has worked out pretty well. "Sayuri" -- as the Sony Pictures Entertainment movie is called here -- ranked a respectable No. 4 among all movies playing here opening week of Dec. 10. Reviews have been generally favorable, lauding it as escapist entertainment.

Although some may wonder how a movie from a studio owned by a Japanese company could bungle a depiction of Japanese culture, the studio's parent company actually had little to do with how the movie turned out. Typically, movie-making decisions are left to the U.S.-based studio and are "not something in which the parent company based in Japan will intervene," Sony Corp. spokesman Kei Sakaguchi says.

Plenty of moviegoers say they like seeing their culture displayed in such a dazzling fashion, with romanticized scenes of the tile roofs and pagodas of old Kyoto and sweeping shots of the green mountains of Japan.

"As foreigners, they really captured Japan's beauty well," says Toyosaka Moriizumi, a Tokyo university professor, after seeing the movie. "Japanese need to be reminded of this beauty."

Viewers are having fun picking apart the film's inaccuracies, but for most Japanese, curiosity on how others see them wins the day. "I'd like to see how foreigners view geisha," says Mutsumi Ogawa, a 47-year-old employee at an auto-parts maker, who's planning to see the movie. Ms. Ogawa has seen both "The Last Samurai" and "Pearl Harbor."

"Memoirs of a Geisha," the best-selling novel by Arthur Golden, on which the movie is based, had also sparked controversy in Japan. Mineko Iwasaki, the retired geisha who inspired Mr. Golden's book, sued him, alleging that Mr. Golden had used her name in his acknowledgment section without her consent. The matter was settled out of court. The fuss didn't hurt sales of the translated book in Japan, where its two volumes have sold around 170,000 copies each -- good for such a book, according to the publisher.

The movie made waves in Japan well before its release, when the filmmakers announced that they had chosen Chinese actresses to play the movie's lead and another major role. On both sides of the Pacific, people took issue with the choice. The moviemakers defended it by saying that equally talented Japanese actresses with strong enough English skills hadn't been available. "I think this has been blown out of all proportion," says executive producer Gary Barber. Ms. Zhang, he adds, was just nominated for a Golden Globe award for her performance and "is incredibly popular in Japan. You hire the best actress for the role."

The criticism had largely died in Japan by the movie's November premier in Tokyo, a star-studded event held at Japan's main sumo stadium.

Many Japanese viewers were amused by the film's inaccuracies. Akiko Hayashi, coming out of a recent evening showing of the film, says she noticed a character in one scene with her kimono crossed right over left -- the way Japanese clothe their dead. But she noted that a scene of sumo wrestling seemed authentic, especially since she recognized one of the athletes as an actual former wrestler.

Ms. Hayashi, a university administrator, says she didn't mind that Chinese actresses got the best parts. Like many Japanese viewers, she was more excited about the fact that the movie -- which has a few famous Japanese actors, such as Ken Watanabe as the male lead -- gave her a chance to judge their English skills. Youki Kudoh, who plays a geisha who is a companion of the main character, was the most impressive, Ms. Hayashi concluded. "That's because she lives in L.A."

Not everyone here has been so understanding about the movie's gaffes -- particularly, Japan's geisha themselves. Juzo Yamashita, the spokesman for a 116-member geisha union in the Gion district of Kyoto, says that just seeing the movie's preview, which he noted showed the improperly worn kimono and un-geisha-like hair -- was enough for his group to decide that it didn't like it. "We are concerned that people may think what is in the movie is true," he says.

The movie plays up something called the "mizu-age," a ritual in which men bid for the virginity of a geisha-to-be. In the past, geisha were considered a kind of high-class prostitute, although today they shun such associations, describing themselves as highly trained practitioners of traditional Japanese dance and music, as well as skilled conversationalists. Rie Tokura, an official with the Kyoto Tourist Bureau, says that the mizu-age is no longer a part of geisha culture. Her office, in an effort to show Americans what real geisha are like, plans to send one, along with two geisha-in-training, to perform in New York in February.

The film, like many recent television shows and books about geisha, has lent a hint of glamour to the profession. Osamu Ito, an official with a Kyoto foundation to promote traditional art, says this has caused more young people in recent years to aspire to be geisha. Currently, in Kyoto, where the geisha tradition has its deepest roots, there are 202 geisha and 76 maiko.

But a geisha's life is not necessarily as glamorous as it's cracked up to be. They make approximately 30,000 yen to 40,000 yen ($345) for two hours entertaining customers. Popular geisha do well, but others in the dying profession only manage to scrape by. Geisha must pay for their own dancing and music lessons, and also for their extremely expensive kimonos.

Mr. Ito says he doesn't have a problem with the movie -- even though he's heard about its inaccuracies. "It's something Hollywood people made using their own imagination," he says. "There's no need to make a fuss over it.""