Memoirs of a very controversial geisha

David Gritten reports from the Tokyo world première of a film that is making waves in Japan and China

Japanese cinema audiences tend not to whoop and holler to show their approval for films, which can make it hard to gauge their reactions. Even so, the applause that followed the world première of Memoirs of a Geisha in Tokyo this week was warm enough to bring a smile to the features of American director Rob Marshall.

If that smile bore traces of relief, it was understandable. Marshall (who directed the multi-Oscar-winner Chicago) knew that the Japanese reception to the film represented a potential banana skin. It is, after all, a specifically Japanese story. But it is based on a novel written by an American author (Arthur Golden), financed by two Hollywood studios (Columbia and DreamWorks), and stars three Chinese actresses: Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li and Michele Yeoh.

So would the Japanese take to their hearts this subtitled, bizarrely multinational portrayal of their culture? It didn't help that Golden's 1997 novel was not a hit in Japan - though elsewhere it has been a huge bestseller, shifting four million copies in English alone and translated into 32 languages.

The story starts in 1929 and advances through the Second World War. Ziyi Zhang plays Chiyo, who as a child is taken from her penniless parents to become a housemaid in a geisha house. Mentored by a friendly older geisha (Yeoh) and overcoming the jealous treachery of another (Gong Li), she changes her name to Sayuri (the film's title in Japan) and in "this tiny world of women" becomes a celebrated geisha herself.

These hostesses, with their distinctive kimonos, jet-black hair, blood-red lips and white, mask-like make-up, are taught not to expect love in their lives. But as a little girl, Chiyo develops a crush on a kindly businessman known as the Chairman (played by Japanese actor Ken Watanabe) that endures into her adult life.

The setting for the première was peculiarly Japanese. Ryogoku Kokugikan is a cavernous 3,000-seat hall that usually stages sumo wrestling. Around its walls hang 24 large portraits of sumo stars.

Marshall and eight of the cast arrived at the hall together and walked down the red carpet not as individuals, as in the West, but in a line, arms linked. After the film, two bare-chested men in the circle beat on massive drums called taikos, creating a "conversation" that reached a noisy climax, the cue for Marshall and his actors to appear on stage and receive applause.

When they gave speeches, Ziyi Zhang came close to tears in thanking Marshall for "the chance the film gave all Asian actors". Japanese-born Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who has a minor role, noted that it was unusual to be part of a cast of international Asian actors: "And we have Hollywood to thank for that."

These expressions of nation-to-nation solidarity were no accident. In Japan, speculation has been rife about whether Chinese actresses could play geishas. (Michele Yeoh is actually Malaysian, but Hong Kong cinema made her a star.) In China, Ziyi Zhang has come under fire for choosing to play love scenes with the Japanese actor Watanabe.

All this has happened at a time when relations between Japan and China are frosty. Japan's new prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, is a staunch nationalist, and his recent visit to the Yasukuni shrine, a symbol of Japanese militarism where the country's war dead are commemorated, caused offence in China, where the Japanese occupation is still bitterly remembered.

Concerns about the film's authenticity linger mainly in small pockets. Its British distributors, Buena Vista International UK, arranged for me and a small group to meet and talk to two geishas. Mikiko, a young woman in her twenties, joined the profession after graduating from university, "because I loved the kimonos".

She had doubts about the film: "Being a geisha isn't something you just pick up to star in a movie. Putting on a kimono and learning how to wear it and move inside it takes years." Chinese actresses, she felt, could not look genuine: "They even have different hairlines from us."

But in fairness, Memoirs of a Geisha could never recoup its $85 million budget merely by appealing to geishas: they are a dwindling breed. Tokyo boasts fewer than 300 geishas, and they are rarely glimpsed. Informal questioning of the audience after the film suggested that many young Japanese know little of the geisha life. Nor can the film hope for global success without stellar casting - and no Japanese actress has the international appeal of Zhang, Gong Li or Yeoh.

Nit-picking aside, the film features opulent re-creations of Japanese villages, homes, tea-houses - and an entire geisha district. Shooting in real locations in Japan was originally considered, but this was logistically impossible. Instead, this almost vanished world was constructed mainly in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles.

Its visual lushness suggests that Memoirs of a Geisha will feature strongly in the upcoming awards season. Its production designer and make-up artists will surely be rewarded, as should costume designer Colleen Attwood, who created the exquisite kimonos, and maybe even Gong Li and Watanabe as supporting actors.

One felt after the première that if the film can capture Japan, it can play anywhere. Robert Mitchell, who runs BVI UK, says it is being positioned "as a love story, set against a stirring backdrop and the sweep of history". That sounds about right: a concept to transcend national rivalries.

• Memoirs of a Geisha is released in the UK next month.