"Memoirs of a Geisha" is likely to give Americans the sense that they have learned something about Japan, but it actually reinforces stereotypes of Japan as an exotic, mysterious place, a Duke University expert on Japanese culture says.
The movie, based on the best-selling book of the same title, is scheduled for exclusive release Dec. 9 and nationwide release Dec. 23.
"People were reading the book as if they were really reading something about Japan. But it's connecting to a past, fantasy version of Japan," said Anne Allison, chairman of Duke's cultural anthropology department. "It doesn't really help Americans understand and learn about contemporary Japan."
Allison, who studies the globalization of Japanese popular culture, did an ethnographic study of American readers' reactions to the book. What she found was that people read the book as if it were nonfiction; some even thought it was a real memoir.
But readers' impressions that they were learning about "the real Japan" was undercut by the fact that the story actually makes Japan and its culture seem alien to Americans, she said. Allison found that few of the readers, even women, identified with the main character of the geisha Sayuri or found similarities between her life and theirs. Instead, they described the culture in the book as "savage but erotic" and "beautiful but primitive."
Allison said she thinks the author -- an American man -- got the factual information "right enough," but that the overall impression conveyed by the book is to "Orientalize" Japan.
The love story in particular seemed a Hollywood-style American tale, rather than a Japanese one, Allison said.
"It's not that he falsified what could have been the life history of a geisha; it's more what parts he chose to emphasize and play up," she said. "This is appealing to the fantasy of Western guys."