It's a recognized fact that many epic love stories of literature and cinema transpire around or during a war. Consider, for example, Casablanca (World War II), Gone with the Wind (the American Civil War), Dr. Zhivago (the Russian Revolution), and Pearl Harbor (just kidding). Memoirs of a Geisha falls into this category. At its heart, this is a romance that transpires against the background of an ever-changing Japan during the 1930s and 1940s. Although the film is less concerned with the war than with the impact it has upon the characters, much of the final act could not have occurred without the influence of the postwar American occupation of Japan.
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