CHINA has banned the film Memoirs of a Geisha, which features a Chinese actress kissing a Japanese actor, for fear that it couldspark a renewed burst of anti-Japanese sentiment.

Just days before the film’s release, officials have ordered cinemas to remove it from their schedules.

The movie, starring Zhang Ziyi and Ken Watanabe, did not fall foul of China’s censors, who had already decided to cut at least one scene deemed too risqué, but was axed by officials at a much higher level.

Government leaders felt that the sight of two of China’s biggest stars — Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li — as well as Malaysian-Chinese actress and former Bond girl Michelle Yeoh playing the roles of Japanese courtesans could provoke popular anger. Their decision came less than a year after thousands of Chinese rampaged through several cities in an outburst of anger over a Japanese textbook regarded as whitewashing Japan’s brutal invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s.

China, and many Chinese, believe that Japan has not done enough to atone for its occupation from 1937 to 1945 in which some 37 million Chinese were killed or wounded.

Many Chinese have expressed outrage that Chinese actresses should have been willing to play the roles of Japanese courtesans. Comments on the internet have attacked Zhang Ziyi, star of House of Flying Daggers, for embracing a Japanese man.

The Shanghai Youth Daily reported that the movie had passed inspection by SARFT, the film regulator, and the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio had begun its work. Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi had agreed to dub their own roles in the Chinese version.

But when the translated script was sent to SARFT for further inspection it failed to receive approval. SARFT had been receiving letters from almost every day protesting against the film’s release in China.

Officials at Sony Pictures Entertainment were notified of the cancellation this week. Columbia Pictures had planned to distribute the film in China.

The movie is already widely available on the streets as a pirated DVD that sells for about 80p. Chinese who have seen the film have been generally unimpressed.

One young woman who watched the DVD said: "It wasn’t believable that she could stay in love with one man for all those years just because of a single smile. And the dance scene was very odd. Was it Japanese?"

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