Ginza no onna (1955)

Ikuyo is the boss of Shizumoto, a geisha residence that employs four other women. All of them, simultaneously, reveal the extreme hardships of the profession. From the frustrated search for popularity in the newspapers, through the diffuse desires for motherhood and ending in disappointment in love, the five women survive under the incandescent sky of Ginza, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Tokyo. Told from the perspective of a recently hired young geisha apprentice, Women of Ginza is an acidic and lucid portrait of these women who, even in defeat, emerge enlightened.