Feisty Japanese Pop Star in the Japanese Film, Sakuran

Popular Japanese- star, Anna Tsuchiya brings grrrl and bad girl attitude to her steamy role as courtesan, Kiyoha in the film Sakuran.

It opens with bright red goldfish swimming in empty space, and this vivid, hallucinatory imagery continues throughout the film; an analogy to high-ranking courtesans, known as oiran, who only stay beautiful in their bowl.

Pop Star, Anna Tsuchiya in the Japanese Film, Sakuran

A rebellious, eight year old girl is dragged through the Great Gate to Tamagikuya, a particular house in Yoshiwara during the season of cherry blossoms.  But there are no cherry blossoms where she goes.

A kind young manservant, Seiji (Masanobu Ando) murmurs that if ever the tree in their small garden flowers, he will free her.  She retorts, “I’ll free myself!”

Adapted from artist Moyoco Anno’s popular manga by Yuki Tanada, the film brings to life the pleasure quarters of Edo-period Yoshiwara of the 1700s.  Photographer Mika Ninagawa, making her film debut in Sakuran, directs it.

Kiyoha’s success as a prostitute comes from her ability to ‘fake it’ with men but she is less able to fake the sinuous movements of a true geisha or oiran when dressed in the tools of her trade.

For a while, it seemed that Sakuran was a not so new twist on Memoirs of a Geisha but the sequence of hundreds of breasts seen in a communal bath by the young Kiyoha is certainly feistier than Geisha; a departure that carries through the film into the fights and dramas of so many women in a closed environment.

Because women have made Sakuran, it is apparent that the heroine is meant to be more pro-feminist than most tales about geishas, prostitutes and high-ranking oiran.  Also contemporary is the sound track of blaring rock music composed by Ringo Shena.

Despite well-intended efforts, the plot fails to sustain its graphic and sometimes shocking portrayals of life in a Japanese fish bowl by bowing out on a level with TV soaps.

The poor boy gets the girl, and the rich samurai who wants to save her gets left behind; even though, learning of Kiyoha’s predilection for cherry blossom, he buys enough trees to light up the whole pleasure quarter.

Near the end, there is a touching repriese as Kiyoha, now the famous oiran Higurashi, once again sees her first lover, Old Man Konoya, played by the renowned actor, Sadanji Ickikawa; he dies in her arms.

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