The Geisha House

Fukasaku’s latest film. Fukasaku already had an eye on this original script by Shindo Kaneto thirty years ago. He turned it into his first serious women’s film. The title heroine Omocha shares her geisha name with the protagonist from Mizoguchi Kenji’s Gion no shimai/Sisters of Gion (1936). The film describes the life of Omocha, daughter of the poor weaver Nishijin in Kyoto forty years ago, from the time when she comes to work as maid in a geisha house and is inaugurated into the arts and crafts of the trade, until the time when she blossoms as a beautiful butterfly and makes her entrance as a fully-ledged geisha. In a lyrical tone, the film portrays the heroine as a brave and exemplary woman who won’t be put of track by anyone. Fukasaku shows her in the midst of the female drama that happens in and around her: the everyday life of the geisha, the relationships with the customers, with the madame and the pattern that takes care of them and the friendship and machinations between the geisha. He interweaves this with the vicissitudes around Omocha’s poor family and her first love. Many scenes are set indoors, with the exuberant group portrait of the twittering, singing and quarrelling geishas walking in and out radiating a vitality reminiscent of Battles Without Honour and Humanity. Miyamoto Maki made her début as the title role of Omocha. Fuji Sumiko in the role of the madame was previously a star under the name Fuji Junko in many Toei Yakuza films.