Kankuro Kudo, a popular screenwriter and the director of "Yaji and Kita - The Midnight Pilgrims", is working on his next project, a wacky comedy about maiko (sort of.. top geisha in the exclusive Kyoto district), "Maiko Haaaan!!!", together with director Nobuo Mizuta, Sanspo reported a few days ago.
The leading roles are played by Sadawo Abe ("Yaji and Kita"), Shinichi Tsutsumi ("Always - Sunset in Third Street") and Kou Shibasaki ("Sinking of Japan"). Abe plays an ordinary salary-man Kimihiko, who is just transferred to Kyoto and decides to dedicate his whole life just to play with a maiko. Shibasaki plays his former-girlfriend-turns-to-maiko, and Tsutsumi plays the villain, a baseball player who is a regular in maiko houses and despise Kimihiko. Kimihiko, then, decides to become a baseball player himself to equal the villain guy...
If the story sounds crazy, that's exactly what people expect from Kudokan (short for Kudo Kankuro). He and Director Mizuta has been planning about this film with original script for 4 years. Kudokan has wanted to do the original scrpit, not the adpoted script like "GO" or "Ping Pong", both of which he wrote the screenplay. Then he just came up with the maiko idea, and as he did the research on it, he became more and more excited because "there are so many rules and customs that modern world cannot even imagine, and visual is so gorgeous, and it is hard to determine whether it is something very old or very new."
The film is schedule to open in summer 2007.
Source: SANSPO
"Yaji and Kita - The Midnight Pilgrims" Region 1
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