Virginity For Sale to the Highest Bidder

This is all I remember from Memoirs of a Geisha which I rented over the weekend.

And here is where you need to stop reading if you don’t want me to spoil it.

The movie is creepy because it is about girls who are sold into a world of prostitution and it is glamorized to some degree.

Zang Zi Yi’s character meets an older man at the age of 9 and he is kind to her and she instantly falls in love with him and prays to become a Geisha so she can be part of his world. The crazy thing is that at the end of the movie you find out that he helps her to become a Geisha and that he was in love with her too.

Now if I met a 9 year old girl today, the last thing I would think would be how I could help her become a Geisha so that one day I could marry her. Doesn’t that seem twisted? If he knew that she was trapped in this house and he was rich, why didn’t he just buy her and spare her this life of cruelty?

I am sure that in reality that my solution to this problem would be laughable. The very thought of a man helping a young girl out of the goodness of his heart would probably have been absurd in Japanese culture.

The movie is a good story and an eye opener to the cruelties that women have to face in some cultures. I recommend watching it if you are intrigued by anything Oriental or Japanese or Asian or Vietnamese or Korean, like I am.