"She deserves to be chopped into a thousand bits," said one Internet user, one
of more than 1,000 people who posted on the subject at the Tianji (Sky's Edge)
Web portal.
"Zhang is a shameless prostitute," another posting said. "She should be
deprived of Chinese citizenship."
Relations between China and Japan, the two powerhouses of East Asia, are at a
low ebb. Despite deepening economic ties with Japan, China still harbors bitter
feelings toward Japan dating to the period before and during World War II, when
Japan invaded large parts of China and dealt brutally with the Chinese people.
Many Chinese, censored from voicing their views of their own authoritarian
government, express anger whenever they perceive any sign of national weakness
before Japan.
The film, which will be released Friday in the United States, is an
international production. Its American director, Rob Marshall, is known for the
2002 Oscar-winning movie "Chicago." In addition to Zhang Ziyi, the movie stars
Japanese actor Ken Watanabe ("The Last Samurai"), Chinese actress Gong Li and
Malaysian martial-arts star Michelle Yeoh, an ethnic Chinese who's playing the
role of mentor to the movie's protagonist.
"It's a bit awkward that the main character, Sayuri, isn't played by a Japanese
actress when the movie primarily focuses on Japanese culture," a woman who
identified herself only as Kai told Japan Today Online.
"I think Hollywood people don't care whether they (the actresses) are Japanese
or Chinese," said Chiaki Miyazaki, a 46-year-old Kyoto native who's a music
producer. "When I was in the United States, American people thought Japanese,
Chinese and Korean are all the same."
One of China's best-known film directors, Chen Kaige, who did the 1993 movie
"Farewell, My Concubine," questioned in a speech in the Japanese city of Kobe
on November 9 why Japanese actresses weren't found for the leading roles.
"I just don't understand why," Chen said. "Geisha is a centuries-old Japanese
tradition and cannot possibly be portrayed by Chinese actresses. The geisha
have a sophisticated way of walking, holding a fan, smiling and looking at
people."
Many modern Japanese women hardly know how to wear kimono or walk in
traditional wooden sandals, said Tsukiko Doi, a restaurant owner in Kyoto.
"Maybe they can't sit on their heels with their back straight and knees
together," Doi said. "Yet still they have a sense of being Japanese."
The release of the movie in China has been postponed to at least February 10
because censors are haggling with producers about whether a sex scene can be
cut in length, Asian Sex Gazette reported last week.
Some of the publicity about "Memoirs of a Geisha," which is based on a novel of
the same name by Arthur Golden that spent two years on the New York Times
bestseller list, appeared to be the result of mischief-makers in China, who
distributed fake pictures of Zhang and Watanabe in a nude scene from the movie.
The doctored photos are all over Web sites in China.
Knight Ridder
