The musical used to be among the rarest of Japanese film genres. Plenty of films here ¡ª going back to the early talkies ¡ª featured singing and dancing, but Broadway-style musicals, which integrate the songs into the story, never really caught on.
Is a revival underway? Last month, Sion Sono¡¯s rap-musical ¡°Tokyo Tribe¡± hit theaters. This month, it¡¯s Masayuki Suo¡¯s ¡°Maiko wa Lady (Lady Maiko),¡± which could be called Japan¡¯s first geisha musical movie.
In gestation for nearly two decades, ¡°Maiko¡± is also Suo¡¯s first mass-audience-friendly film since his 1996 smash ¡°Shall We Dance?¡± Why the long blank? Basically, Suo decided to go into a more serious direction, making the 2007 legal drama ¡°Soredemo Boku wa Yattenai (I Just Didn¡¯t Do It)¡± and the 2012 medical melodrama ¡°Tsui no Shintaku (A Terminal Trust).¡±
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