Epitome (1953)

Shusei Tokuda's starkly realistic novel about a poor girl pressed into becoming a geisha was forcefully adapted by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba). When Ginko (Nobuko Otowa, Shindo's wife) falls in love with one of her clients, she is handily rebuffed by the young man's wealthy family, and left to wander from geisha house to geisha house.