Considered to be one of the best Japanese films of the ‘70s, Tatsumi Kumashiro’s The World of Geisha is a keen examination of the swirling nexus that attracts sex to money and money to power. Set in a geisha house just before the Russo-Japanese War, a beautiful Geisha spends the night with a first-time customer who is about to be married. As an experienced geisha, she is not supposed to become personally involved (or sexually excited), but does anyway.
Her fellow geishas, both young and old, become involved with a variety of relationships as Kumashiro boldly analyzes the politics of the period using images of rice riots, Korean uprisings, and the eventual Japanese invasion of Siberia.
Tatsumi Kumashiro (神代 辰巳, Kumashiro Tatsumi?) was a Japanese film director best known known for his critically acclaimed, award-winning Roman Porno films, such as Ichijo’s Wet Lust (1972) and The Woman with Red Hair (1979). He was the most highly-acclaimed director of the early Nikkatsu Roman Porno era, with many box-office successes, and films regularly appearing on the yearly Best Ten lists of the mainstream Kinema Junpo and Eiga Geijutsu film journals. Kumashiro has been called, “the most consistently successful director in Japan’s cinematic history,” and Allmovie calls him, "arguably the most important Japanese director to emerge during the 1970s.
In 1971, facing bankruptcy due to a loss of their audience to television, Nikkatsu decided to devote its facilities almost exclusively to theatrical soft-core pornography. Several directors, not wishing to work in pornography, left the studio, opening up vacant positions.
Nikkatsu gave its Roman porno directors a great deal… read more
We continue our end-of-2011 celebration not of new films but of old films revived and seen throughout the year.
