Uniformity, so to speak
A multicultural cast needs a universal language, and so does its
audience. For every ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ actor, that meant starting
fresh.

By John Horn, Times Staff Writer

The story unfolds in Kyoto. The movie was shot in Southern California.
Its stars hail from Japan, China, Vietnam, Malaysia and the United
States. And five lead actors had never before made a film in English.

If ever a movie needed a common language, it was “Memoirs of a
Geisha,” opening Dec. 9. Yet the challenges of verbal communication
weren’t limited to “Geisha’s” physical production. The movie’s makers
also had to pick a distinct dialect in which the movie would be
performed, lest it resemble a U.N. cocktail party. They ultimately
settled on a lightly Japanese-accented English, a choice that proved
difficult for several Asian actors to pull off and required some
high-tech editing tricks to polish.

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“Nothing compares to this,” says Jessica Drake, the film’s supervising
dialect coach. Drake should know. She taught Russell Crowe how to
shake his Aussie accent for “L.A. Confidential” and Tom Hanks how to
pick up an Alabama drawl for “Forrest Gump.” “This was the hardest
thing I ever worked on,” Drake says of “Geisha.”

From the start of adapting Arthur Golden’s bestselling novel about a
legendary geisha in early 20th century Japan, screenwriter Robin
Swicord and director Rob Marshall elected to follow Golden’s lead and
tell the story almost entirely in English.

American moviegoers aren’t terribly keen on subtitles, but in truth
that wasn’t the sole reason Marshall (“Chicago”) filmed only the
opening segment with Japanese dialogue. Had the actors performed the
entire movie in the language, the director says, “I never would have
known what they were saying.”

Marshall, who knows but a handful of Japanese phrases, then faced the
coupled obstacles of not only teaching his pan-Asian cast to speak and
understand English but also training them in the same patois, so that
they all sounded as if they were in the same movie.

Marshall asked his lead performers to audition in English, a condition
that nearly cost one of the film’s stars a job. In an early meeting,
veteran Japanese actor Kôji Yakusho toiled reading the prominent role
of Nobu in English, with Marshall eventually pulling him aside to tell
him his diction wasn’t good enough.

Yakusho asked for a second chance and came back after two weeks of
studying English. He got the part.

Then the real work began for the five lead actors who had never acted
in English-speaking parts. “Our table read, which normally would last
a couple of hours, lasted weeks,” Marshall says.

The actors spent six weeks perfecting their English, and it was a
constant test. In addition to Drake, the movie employed another
dialect coach, a dialogue coach (who would run lines with actors) and
two translators.

Ziyi Zhang, the Chinese actress who stars in the film as geisha Sayuri
Nitta, says the script was peppered with words that proved nearly
insurmountable. “The word ‘world’ for me is really hard,” the actress
says in what is now competent and clear English. “One hundred times
later, I was able to say it.”

The next step involved accents, which were critical to master.

Past pronouncements

It was relatively easy to avoid the clichéd disasters of Japanese
American speech similar to Mickey Rooney’s tactless performance as Mr.
Yunioshi in 1961’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” More difficult was
steering clear of the minor missteps that also would invite critical
curses: Consider the thrashing Kevin Costner received for his vaguely
English accent in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” the hits Brad Pitt
took for his stab at an Irish brogue in “The Devil’s Own,” or the
multo brutto notices Nicolas Cage collected for “Captain Corelli’s
Mandolin.”

“Geisha’s” actors of Chinese and Japanese descents labored to
pronounce contractions, which were eventually eliminated by Marshall
and uncredited screenwriter Doug Wright because they were difficult to
speak and felt modern and informal. Drake marked up her script too,
eliminating lines she knew would be beyond reach, including the
comment “He is a prickly fellow.” Says Drake: “We cut that out before
we even got there.”

Marshall and Drake settled on what stage actors would recognize as
standard American English, a pattern of enunciation favored by the
late speech teacher Edith Skinner. The dialect resonates as vaguely
British and of a different period because it softens some hard vowels;
rather than say “ask,” as many would sharply pronounce it, the word
comes out as “aaahsk.”

Before they could learn a new accent, though, many cast members first
had to lose an old one. “Geisha’s” native Chinese speakers (who
include Zhang and Gong Li as the story’s villain, Hatsumomo) would
bring one set of enunciations to English words, while native Japanese
speakers (Yakusho, Kaori Momoi as the landlady O-kami and Suzuka Ohgo
as young Sayuri) would bring another.

As Zhang describes it, a Chinese speaker would tend to pronounce a
phrase such as “rock and roll” as “wok and woll,” while a Japanese
speaker might sound more like “lock and loll.”

“Everybody had to meet in the middle,” says Drake, who trained the
actors in part by burning hundreds of CDs with accent reduction
drills. “There are specific sounds that are very difficult for
specific language groups.”

Michelle Yeoh, the Malaysian actress who plays Sayuri’s guide and
mentor, Mameha, actually had to trim her British accent because she
has lived so long in the United Kingdom. Similarly, the American child
actress Zoe Weizenbaum, who plays young Pumpkin, had to drop her U.S.
intonations. In addition to struggling with language, the producers
faced criticism for awarding so many parts to non-Japanese actors.

As the cast’s accents became more uniform, Marshall started working
with the actors on their emotional inflections. “It wasn’t just about
mastering English,” Marshall says. “It was about shading and subtext
and subtlety — all the things that make for a great actor.”

While most of the cast learned enough English to pull off the job,
some fell back on repeating phonetics the way Sweden’s ABBA would sing
an English-language rock song. Despite his two-week audition-crash
course, Yakusho performed largely by memorizing phonetic
pronunciations.

Finally, once in the editing room, Marshall found that for all the
rehearsals and all the drills, there were several words that just
didn’t sound right. Although it was suggested he cast some voice
doubles to re-record the problematic dialogue, Marshall refused.

The solution was to have dialogue editor Renee Tondelli search through
an actor’s other scenes, clipping a consonant from one word to splice
onto another. (In Japan, the film will be dubbed with the Japanese
actors speaking their parts.)

Zhang says an acting teacher once told her that it was impossible to
act in a second language, “That the language would be a barrier. But
after this movie, I have to say that is not true. We can get into a
character’s mind.”

“Protest is brewing by the Japanese community prior to the release of producer Steven Spielberg’s screen adaptation of “Memoirs of a Geisha” Chief among the complaints is the casting of Chinese, Malaysian, and Asian actors and actresses in the roles of Japanese characters, and primarily with Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi in the lead.
Based on reported production information the film also features Michelle Yeoh of Malaysia, Gong Li of China, and Kenneth Tsang of Hong Kong, China — all portraying Japanese characters. Group member Jessica Burkard of a local group in Seattle has said there is “complete and utter outrage” in the Japanese community over this, and they, like other groups of Japanese descent, are calling for and planning a boycott of the film.

Knowing the history between China and Japan, the group finds it “highly insulting” that the filmmakers would cast Chinese talents in the parts of Japanese characters. Burkard explained that you would not cast people of African American or Hispanic heritage as Caucasians. “The perception is that we (Chinese and Japanese) look alike, and are the same, well we do not and are not the same and filmmakers should not make sweeping generalizations that are insensitive to our culture and heritage.”

This is not the first time that Spielberg has worked on a film based on Japan, as his “Empire of the Sun” and, to a lesser extent, “1941″ looked at the war as both as drama and a comedy. Burkard went on to say that they have been in contact with other groups on a local, national, and international basis who share the same concerns and plan to boycott the film as well.

Thanks to Gareth at Skewed & Reviewed for this report.”

Anger as film highlights good-time geisha girls

By Colin Joyce in Tokyo and Richard Spencer in Beijing
(Filed: 30/11/2005)

Japan hosted the premiere of a Hollywood film on geishas last night amid anger that the girls are portrayed as prostitutes and the actresses who play them Chinese.

Memoirs of a Geisha not only has Chinese leading ladies, it is a screen version of a book by an American, directed by an American and shot in California, not Kyoto, their traditional home.

Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh and Gong Li in Memoirs of a Geisha
The film, shown in the national sumo stadium, is strongly sexual and likely to reinforce the geishas’ reputation as women of the night.

But in Japanese “geisha” means “person of art” and the girls see themselves as guardians of such traditions as the tea ceremony, flower arranging and poetry.

They insist that in their unique “flower and willow world” wealthy patrons pay for these talents, plus their cultured conversation, not sexual favours. Both Arthur Golden’s 1997 bestseller and the new film show novices selling their virginity to the highest bidder, which geishas say is a slur on their profession.

As wounding to Japanese pride are the actresses playing the three main geishas: Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh, a former Bond girl, and Gong Li, all ethnic Chinese.

The casting provoked fury in China, where one website attacked Zhang for playing a “Japanese prostitute” and the lover of a Japanese man, the actor Ken Watanabe.

“How outrageous, to sleep with a Japanese man for money. She has humiliated all Chinese,” complained one internet posting.

Many Chinese are sensitive because of bitter memories from the Second World War, when thousands of Chinese women were forced into sexual slavery by Japan.

The film’s director, Bob Marshall, first upset Japanese when he suggested there were no Japanese actresses suitable for the geisha roles.

Chen Kaige, the director of the celebrated 1993 film Farewell My Concubine, said: “Geisha cannot be performed by Chinese. It’s an age-old traditional Japanese culture.

“How to walk, how to hold a fan, how to smile, how to look at people, all these gestures and facial expressions you need to be reared in Japan to perform.

“But perhaps American producers don’t care.”

Critics say the film’s dancing looks all wrong and the kimono has been “sexed up”. The geisha’s white make-up, which foreigners might find scary and unattractive, has also been dropped.

Such details will infuriate the geisha, who train intensively to master intricate dances and pay a fortune for elaborate kimonos.

Golden’s book depicts a geisha house rife with scheming and bullying. But real geisha take pride in being independent while living together with “sisters” and “mothers”.

Mineko Iwasaki, a former geisha interviewed at length by Golden during his research, released her own book to correct what she considered his errors.

The film adaptation of Arthur Golden’s best-selling novel Memoirs of a Geisha met with mixed reaction at its world premiere in Tokyo Tuesday, amid concerns about its portrayal of Japanese culture.

Despite much anticipation, the project has drawn criticism from different camps in Japan and China.

In Japan, critics have questioned whether a Hollywood movie can accurately depict the nuanced culture of geishas – the women trained from childhood in music, dance and conversation in order to be elegant companions to wealthy men. In the past, geishas have been portrayed outside the country as nothing more than glorified prostitutes.

The filmmakers have been disparaged in Japan for shooting most of the movie on California soundstages. They have also been criticized for casting non-Japanese actors for Geisha’s three female leads: China’s Zhang Ziyi stars in the title role, while compatriot Gong Li and Chinese-Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh star as her rival and mentor, respectively.

At the risk of prolonging the debate about the accents, I’d say that, the two times I watched Geisha, the accents were suitably Japanese-ish. And by the way, I loved the book, and I loved the movie even more. It’s all a tempest in a teapot! Or make that, a temptress in a teapot…

No use crying over spilled milku, but I would have cast Yukie Nakama as Sayuri
and Kyoko Hasegawa
and Misaki Ito as the three leads. What other stars can you recommend for the roles?

Photo call, please!

Lots of people will have a basis for judging the screen adaptation. Memoirs of a Geisha has sold more than 4 million copies in North America and has also come out in Japanese, Chinese and other 30 other languages.

It was Golden’s first novel. He doesn’t have any Japanese ancestors, being Jewish and a member of the illustrious family tree that owns and founded the New York Times.

Born to wealth in 1956 in Chattanooga, Tenn., he attended Harvard College, natch, where he studied the Japanese language and culture. In 1980, he earned a graduate degree in Japanese history from Columbia. Golden also spent a year in Tokyo working for a Japanese company, with connections from his New York Times family.

In his late 20s, Golden got this idea for a novel. “It took me a little while to realize I had no idea what I was doing. I was writing and writing and writing, and nothing was happening.”

A scholar at heart, he then applied himself to learning fictional technique. “I was fascinated. That’s what really focused me.”

Perfectionism still slowed him down. He had written 800 pages of Memoirs when a Japanese friend of his grandmother’s offered to introduce him to a geisha named Mineko. She had retired and lived in Kyoto.

“What I heard from her was the kind of information I couldn’t get my hands on. How do you get your hair done? How long does it take? What time do you wake up? All of that stuff — those were the things that I had got drastically wrong.”

Golden chucked his manuscript and started again. Then, after a tepid response to his manuscript from agents, he rewrote Memoirs again.

He figured he needed to change it to a first-person narrative, and go back before World War II to include his geisha’s childhood.

After a recent screening of Memoirs of a Geisha, rumor has it that a famous director has been brought in to write narration for the film. According to http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/: “…the exotic story elements (the film is set in Japan in the 1930s and ’40s) aren’t being understood and/or absorbed as clearly as Sony would like, so Cold Mountain director Anthony Minghella has been brought in to write some voice-over narration.”

You can tell when an apprentice geisha has lost her virginity by her hairstyle. The maiden hairstyle of a maiko, called wareshinobu, is characterized by a bagel-shaped, rolled knot worn high on her head, decorated with ribbons, ornaments, and silk flowers. A less decorated style with the knot lower down, called ofuku, means the maiko has had her first sexual experience.

Do Chinese and Japanese People Really Look alike?

2005-12-1 12:41:20 CRIENGLISH.com

It’s one of those questions that produces a genteel cringe – it’s a bit essentialist, a bit racist, can we just not talk about it please? – but today we must because Hollywood, where sensitivity exists in inverse proportion to global clout, has made a film of Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha. It is set in Japan, and is about a Japanese woman, but they have cast three Chinese actresses, Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh, and Gong Li, in the main roles.

Zhang Ziyi Michelle Yeoh Gong Li

The Chinese, and the Japanese, are peeved. It is not just a matter of physiognomy, of course: the Rape of Nanjing, to take one example of Japanese aggression, does not for kindly feelings make. Meanwhile, many Japanese feel that geisha training is so finely calibrated, so embedded in their own culture, that they refuse to imagine a Chinese person accurately portraying it. Many, including Shinobu, a makeup artist who arrived in Britain 10 years ago and counts Madonna among her clients, are outraged that no Japanese actor should star in a film so rooted in Japan.

But is Hollywood’s obvious assumption, that all Orientals look the same, true? Not really. Shinobu says people from either country can often tell people apart, partly because “Japanese girl’s faces have been changing over the past few years, as their diets change and they eat more fast food. Chinese girls still, for me, have a more traditional Oriental look.” Then again, four years ago Dyske Suematsu, a Japanese-born US writer, set up a light-hearted website called alllooksame.com because “I don’t think that I can tell [Koreans, Japanese, or Chinese] apart.” It includes a game in which various faces pop up and you’re asked to pick: Korean, Japanese, or Chinese? By the middle of last year, 1.3 million had taken the test.

It seems many are confused. Which perhaps only proves that few nations can claim an ethnic monoculture. Imperial Japan might be infamous for a certain fascistic pride in homogeneity, but 30% of it was not ethnically Japanese. China, meanwhile, encompasses 55 ethnic groups. All the more reason for that broad Hollywood broom to be exchanged for a calligraphy brush. But what are the chances of that?

(Source: The Guardian, Photo: Nanfang Daily)