The musical used to be among the rarest of Japanese film genres. Plenty of films here — going back to the early talkies — featured singing and dancing, but Broadway-style musicals, which integrate the songs into the story, never really caught on.

Is a revival underway? Last month, Sion Sono's rap-musical "Tokyo Tribe" hit theaters. This month, it's Masayuki Suo's "Maiko wa Lady (Lady Maiko)," which could be called Japan's first geisha musical movie.

In gestation for nearly two decades, "Maiko" is also Suo's first mass-audience-friendly film since his 1996 smash "Shall We Dance?" Why the long blank? Basically, Suo decided to go into a more serious direction, making the 2007 legal drama "Soredemo Boku wa Yattenai (I Just Didn't Do It)" and the 2012 medical melodrama "Tsui no Shintaku (A Terminal Trust)."