Atmosphere and artifice are all, in this gorgeously aestheticized tale about the battle of two top geishas for control of the Nihonbashi area of Edo (old Tokyo). Replete with ghosts, murder, and abandoned babies; lavish with kimonos, tattooed flesh, and flashing daggers, Nihonbashi was Ichikawa's first film in color, and he experimented with many lighting and artificial effects to achieve a heightened aura of sensuality, decadence, and intrigue. The two geishas, embodiments of Edo-era eroticism, vie for the affections of a young doctor. Ichikawa ignores the dictates of the genre, focusing less on the emotional agony of geisha than on their power, beauty, and scheming (as critic Tadao Sato admiringly notes, "dwelling on their eroticism and chivalric codes"). Acted to the hilt and visually stylized, Nihonbashi is, like The Makioka Sisters, a heady evocation of a closed world of social stratagems.-James Quandt