Chinese Geishas Don't Exist!

Bestselling novel "Memoirs of Geisha" by Arthur Golden became a film in 2005 which was directed by Rob Marshall. The main character Sayuri (Zhang Ziyi) played as a Geisha had many controversy due to the fact that she is Chinese playing in a Japanese tradition. Although the topic was unsure about the casting, many believe that it was a negative representation to the diversity of Asian cultures and the misleading image of the traditional geisha. Throughout the film geishas were portrayed as prostitutes, submissive young girls which follows up to the main stereotype known as a china doll.

Geishas are not known to be prostitutes but instead  their status is to be known as entertainers. Since the production of the film and novel were developed by Americans and not Asians, they tend to add these stereotypes to help make it more profound to the media. Although the film carried many misconceptions of the definition of a true geisha by making Asian women to be these submissive prostitutes when the actual meaning of a geisha is to be the complete opposite. The problem of adding these stereotypes in the movie could be the cause that it was developed by a American man, which lead to a misconceiving idea of a geisha.

 "it’s unfortunate that the production didn’t make more of an effort to use native Japanese actresses, but what else would you expect from an adaptation of a fictional Geisha memoir written by an American man and filmed in ultra-fake California"-Chris Nelson

Work Cited

Gritten, David. "Memoirs of a very controversial geisha". Memoirs of a very controversial geisha. The Telegraph. Web. 2 Dec. 2005. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/3648434/Memoirs-of-a-very-controversial-geisha.html>