CHAPTER IV DESCRIPTION AND FINDING
4.1 Data Description
“Memoirs of a Geisha” is a 2005 film adaptation of the novel of the same name, produced by Steven Spielbergs Amblin Entertainment and Spyglass
Entertainment and by Douglas Wicks Red Wagon Productions. It was directed by Rob Marshall. It was released in the United States on December 9, 2005 by
Columbia Pictures and DreamWorks. “Memoirs of a Geisha” is also one of the most love stories and has been translated into thirty – two languages around the world. It
started by the Chinese actresses Zhang Ziyi as Sayuri, Gong Li as Hatsumomo, and Michelle Yeoh who is Malaysian Chinese as Mameha; and Japanese actors Ken
Watanabe as the Chairman, Suzuka Ohgo as Sayuris childhood incarnation Chiyo,
and Youki Kudoh as the adult Pumpkin.
Filming was primarily done in California, and in some locations in Kyoto, including Kiyomizu-dera and Fushimi Inari-taisha. It was nominated for and won
numerous awards, including nominations for six Academy Awards, three of which – Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design – were won.
Marshall was criticised in Japan for choosing a Chinese actress rather than a
Japanese one for a role having so much to do with traditional Japanese culture.
The film, set in Japan during the Showa Era, tells the story of Chiyo Sakamoto portrayed by Suzuka Ohgo as a child and by Zhang Ziyi as an adult, a
poor, young Japanese girl who has been sold along with her older sister Satsu into a life of servitude by her parents when she is nine years old. Chiyo is taken in by the
proprietress of a geisha house, Mother Kaori Momoi, but Satsu is rejected and is sold to another house in the pleasure district of the Hanamachi.
At the okiya geisha house she meets another young girl named Pumpkin Youki Kudoh. Both girls are sent off to geisha school but Chiyo dishonors the
okiya by attempting to run away. Instead of training to become a geisha she is given manual labor to do to pay off the debt of her purchase. Hatsumomo Gong Li, a
beautiful and famous but cruel geisha who also lives at the okiya blackmails Chiyo
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into ruining a kimono belonging to the well-known geisha Mameha Michelle Yeoh. Under Mameha’s mentorship, Chiyo becomes the geisha named Sayuri, trained in all
the artistic and social skills, a geisha must master in order to survive in her society. As a renowned geisha, she enters a society of wealth, privilege, and political intrigue.
As world war II looms in Japan, the Geisha’s world are changed by the onslaught of history.
4.1 Finding
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