Memories of a Geisha (or 2)

I’ve spent most of my life working with Japanese, but have taken only mild interest in the history of their country. My interest in Japan’s unification and the beginning of the Tokugawa Period was sparked when I read James Clavell’s book “Shogun.” The miniseries adaptation of the book was quite excellent and provided fodder for many discussions in English class.

Japanese students are notoriously under-educated in history, and I was amazed at how little my students knew about this period. They knew even less about classic arts and culture, such as Kabuki, Noh, and Bunraku, so I didn’t learn much about those either. Their lack of interest in their own classic culture extended into “the floating world” of the geisha. So my own knowledge of geisha was pretty much restricted to Cho-cho-san of the opera, “Madame Butterfly,” and to their comedic depiction in “The Mikado.”

On one visit to Japan about 20 years ago, several female students accompanied me on a day-trip to Kyoto. As soon as we exited the train station after the 30-minute ride from Hirakata, we ran into two young women dressed in brightly-colored kimono and the white makeup used by geisha. They reminded me of ukiyo-e prints, so many of which James Michener displayed in Hawaii.

I didn’t think much of the encounter, as we were in Kyoto, after all. The girls who were with me, however, went absolutely nuts. They squealed like Beatles fans and jumped up and down like little children. They said I was soooo lucky to have been able to see maiko in person. I had never heard the word “maiko” before and asked how they were different from geisha. If they knew the difference, however, they were unable to explain it. They said most Japanese are never lucky enough to ever encounter these women, and I was extremely lucky. The maiko happened to be going our way so we wound up following them for several blocks. My students never stopped acting star-struck. I’m sure they were very disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm.

I have only recently learned that maiko are simply apprentice geisha. There are many websites explaining all this, of course. Here is just one. http://phototravels.net/japan/photo-gallery/geisha-maiko.html

The reason for this new interest is another book (and movie). A year or so ago my daughter suggested I read (or listen to) Arthur Golden’s “Memoirs of a Geisha.” There was a very long wait to get it from the library, so I bought the abridged version on half.com and listened to it on my great ride up Highway 49 last June. I enjoyed the story but didn’t think much more about it until I read that a movie was being made.

Before seeing the movie I thought I should listen to the unabridged book-on-tape so once again requested it from the library. I got lucky and received it within a few weeks. I am now nearly finished listening to it and am amazed at the difference. The characters are soooo much more interesting when fully developed. While this should be obvious to most, I never felt like the difference would be worth investing 20 hours of listening time. Now I may never listen to abridged versions of books again.

On to the movie. Not having seen it, I expect a problem or two. First, the screenplay will probably approximate the abridged version of the book, in both length and content. Movies are notoriously worse than the books they come from. Another problem with this one is the Chinese actresses playing the Japanese characters. This is slightly better than Ricardo Montalban playing a Japanese in “Sayonara,” or Marlon Brando playing a Japanese in “Teahouse of the August Moon,” but only slightly.

Zhang Zi-Yi and Gong Li are good box office, I guess, but I’d like to think the real reason Japanese actresses weren’t used is that their pronunciation is so unintelligible. This was the main complaint about the aforementioned mini-series, “Shogun.” The important role of the interpreter (love interest) was played by a good actress, Yoko Shimada, but Americans couldn’t understand her. It was a pivotal role of exposition, but I think only English teachers understood her. I enjoyed her, and the screenplay, but I was a member of a small group.

I expect Gong Li has done a good job of portraying the nasty Hatsumomo and I also imagine that Michelle Yeoh did a good job as the kind Mameha even though she's a bit old for the role. I will be surprised, however, if the vixen Zhang Zi-Yi has done a good job of portraying Sayuri. I also read that these actresses were trained to speak English with a Japanese accent. This will undoubtedly make all the dialog even more stilted and hard to understand. Native Chinese speakers trying to speak English with a Japanese accent spells disaster.

Maybe I’ll wait and catch the movie on my All Nippon Airways flight to Shanghai. The Thai flight attendants are trained to speak English with a Korean accent.