Word: geishas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Though Spielberg has a genuine interest in this chapter of history--as demonstrated by Schindler's List, Empire of the Sun and his next project, Memoirs of a Geisha, which will examine the war's disruption of traditional life in Japan--in this case he seems less concerned with history than with showing us, plainly, what war looks like. And it looks hellish. Still, one expects more from such an epic work, which should, ideally, be a springboard for discussion and contemplation...
...classic novel Snow Country, the Nobel prizewinning writer Yasunari Kawabata depicted the mountains of Japan's far north as the place where jaded urbanites could come to bathe in a forgotten innocence--symbolized by the cool Tokyo dilettante who takes up with a local geisha. At the book's haunting end, the man is returning to his wife in Tokyo, suitably refreshed, and the country girl, heartbroken, is left with only memories. Therein lies the promise, and the danger, of what promise to be splendid Games...
...will often expect as much emotionally of a geisha as they would of a wife, without realizing that a geisha's lifestyle cannot allow her to give her emotions so freely. The interactions between men and women seem sad and empty in Gion; so many misunderstandings, so many disappointed dreams, so much pain...
Memoirs of a Geisha is crammed with wonderful sentences; Golden's language is almost overwhelming. He is fond of verbal special effects, and his prose reads almost like a poet's at times Image follows metaphor, which follow conceit, which follows simile. There is proliferation of "like" and "seemed and imaginative figures of speech are densely crammed together. Sometime Golden's images ring false--raindrop that hit "like quail eggs," a sky "extravagant with stars," a retired geisha "more terrified of fire than beer is of a thirst...
Golden would have written a different book if he wished to expose the ugliness of geisha culture; Sayuri ultimately leads a happy life and is satisfied with her lot as a geisha. Yet hints of that ugliness appear even during the most positive parts of his portrayal of geisha's life. The white makeup that transforms an ordinary woman into lovely geisha was once lead-based; this malignant makeup slowly poisoned generation of geisha. Similarly, the most expensive and coveted of a geisha's many beauty ointments is a face cream made of nightingale droppings. Golden has taken even such...