Memoirs of a Geisha is a book written by American author Artur Golden. Genre is historical. Movie was released in 2005 and it stars the Chinese actresses and only one Japanese, even if much of the movie is set in the popular geisha district of Gion in Kyoto in Japan

At the age of nine, Chiyo Sakamoto (Suzuka Ohgo as a young Chiyo) is taken from her home with her older sister Satsu and sold to an okiya (which means  a geisha boarding house).

Other people living in the okiya are another young girl named Pumpkin, elderly and grumbling Granny, money-obsessed Mother. Also the famous, but mean, geisha Hatsumomo (Gong Li), who is disliking Chiyo, and sees her as a threat.

Despite warnings, Chiyo plans escape with Satsu, but is caught. Enraged at her for dishonoring the okiya, Mother makes Chiyo pay off her debts as a slave.

While working as a slave in okiya, Chiyo meets a kind man who gives her money. Chiyo starts calling her as a Chairman (Ken Watanabe) and he’s her first love. She donates the money, praying to become a geisha in the hopes of seeing him again. Soon an older geisha called Mameha (Michelle Yeoh)  persuades Mother to pay  Chiyo’s training. When she can restart her training, Chiyos geisha name becomes Sayuri (Zhang Ziyi as an older Chiyo) and Mameha is acting as her mentor. And at the one point it is clarifyed that Chairman have sent Mameha to help Sayuri.

But because Hatsumomo sees Sayuri as a possible rival she tryes to destroy her fame and take all her customers. But as always, bad people has only bad endings and Hatsumomo losts everything that sha had and is ejected to the streets.

Same time Japan is on the brink of entering world war 2 and many Geisha are evacuated.  Sayuri is  send  far north to work as a kimono maker.  At the end of the war, customer visits Sayuri and asks that if she would return to Okiya and work as a geisha again.

Eventually Sayuri and Chairman confess their love to each other and teh film ends in the words: ”To a man, Geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet to learn of kindness, after so much unkindness… To understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find that her prayers were answered…can that not be called happiness? After all, these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind.” – Sayuri