It took a long time for me to recover from the blast of bullsh*t Orientalism that was "Memoirs of a Geisha." There were the usual symptoms: nausea, shaky hands and an attack of shudders every time I passed by the Oriental Bazaar on Tokyo's Omotesando avenue, among others.
A lengthy period of rehab had buried the nightmare, until an encounter with the film "Silk" — based on a popular novel by Italy's Alessandro Baricco — literally caused the chopsticks to drop from my hands with a dramatic clatter.
An epic tale of love and the silkworm trade set in France and Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, "Silk" is drenched with the kind of East Asian imagery that we in East Asia only experience in NHK dramas that you watch alongside grandparents during new year holidays — after which we all give thanks for wonderful, present-day East Asian realities such as warm toilet seats and 24-hour supermarkets.