If you followed entertainment news, you may have heard of a new movie called Memoirs of a Geisha. It is based on a best selling novel for two years straight by Arthur Golden.

Memoirs of a Geisha is an epic drama set in the mysterious and exotic world of Japan's geishas. The novel is now one of the major movie events of the year. The film stars Asia's most celebrated movie stars including Zhang Ziyi (House of Flying Daggers; Hero), Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai), Gong Li (Raise The Red Lantern), and Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).

In this rich and well received literary masterpiece, Arthur Golden introduced us to this exotic world in the Far East, so unknown even to the younger Japanese generation. The main character of this novel is Sayuri, one of Japan's most celebrated geisha, a woman who is both performer and courtesan, slave and goddess.

We follow Sayuri from her childhood in an impoverished fishing village, where in 1929, she was sold to a representative of a geisha house, who was drawn by the child's unusual blue-grey eyes. At nine years old she was taken to Gion, the pleasure district of Kyoto. In the years that followed, as she worked to pay back the price of her purchase, Sayuri was schooled in music and dance, learned to apply the typical geisha's pasty white makeup, wear elaborate kimono, and care for a coiffure so fragile that it required a special pillow. She also acquired a generous tutor and a malicious rival. Surviving the intrigues of her trade and the upheavals of war, the resourceful Sayuri was a romantic heroine in the same vein as Jane Eyre and Scarlett O'Hara. Memoirs of a Geisha is definitely a triumphant, well researched, and utterly persuasive piece of literary feast.

To the folks unfamiliar with this world, geisha may be misunderstood as prostitutes. In reality, these are well trained professional female entertainers who perform traditional Japanese arts at banquets. Girls who wish to become a geisha, have to go through a rigid apprenticeship during which they learn various traditional arts such as playing instruments, singing, dancing, but also conversation and other social skills. Geisha are dressed in a kimono, and their faces are made up very pale. As a matter of fact, despite all the criticism of the Japanese community regarding the selection of an almost all Chinese cast, except for Watanabe, all the actors in this epic screen adaptation had to go through two months of training on the world of Geishas. The next time, if you had the chance to travel to this part of the world, keep a sharp eye to spot a geisha in some districts of Kyoto, such as Gion and Pontocho.