Mizoguchi’s Sisters of Gion is a story of two sisters living together and working as geisha in Japan.  Omocha is the liberal and more Western younger sister and is contrasted with Umekichi, the complacent and conservative yet socially aware older sister.  Omocha ruthlessly exploits the men throughout the film while Umekichi is concerned with supporting a bankrupt man who assisted her in becoming a geisha.  In the end Omocha ends up seriously injured as a result of her manipulations, and Umekichi is deserted by the man for whom she cared so dearly when he regains his former financial status.
With Sisters of Gion and his other films, Mizoguchi’s goal may have been to create films that more closely resemble written works than Western films, in that they are limited to a single perspective and require more cognitive participation from the audience.  Why has it become accepted in Western cinema to use the camera as a stable objective viewer, a mobile invisible viewer and as the eyes of the characters within a film interchangeably?  Most novels can be characterized as written from a single perspective like third person or first person, yet film cannot truly be categorized as such because of this interchangeability.  Through the use of long shots and long takes and by reducing cuts, shot-reverse-shots and camera movement Mizoguchi has effectively reduced the idea that the viewer is included in the diegetic world.
This interchangeable perspective aspect of the Western systemics seems counterintuitive when considering that the goal of this systemics is to provide seamless continuity and linearity.  Mizoguchi’s approach, hopefully observed somewhat objectively, appears much more logical and provocative (provocative in the sense that it forces one to engage in a more Gestaltist way of thinking).  For example, not a single point-of-view shot is present in Sisters of Gion.  This eliminates the idea that the viewer can observe and perceive exactly what the character would.  And shouldn’t this be the case, considering that throughout a human’s natural life he can never observe or perceive exactly what another being can.  Even in the one scene in which Mizoguchi uses a frontal close-up of Omocha’s face, it does not take on the form of a point-of-view shot.  The scene is set up with an initial long shot in which Jurakudo, a patron of one of the sisters, is attempting to sell a picture scroll.  When Omocha enters the shot, Jurakudo looks up and to the right towards Omocha and there are two quick cuts to a level shot of Omocha’s face, but Omocha is looking directly towards the camera and down.  This prevents the viewer from assuming that they are looking through the eyes of Jurakudo, because we would expect a shot of Omocha looking directly into a low angle shot if this were so.  This eye-line mismatch preserves the viewer’s objectivity and continuity of state.  So why should Western film makers assume that it is logical and acceptable to provide shots that are intended to show the viewer what the character is seeing?  By eliminating point-of-view shots Mizoguchi allows the viewer a separate space and more flexibility in terms of what they can believe a character perceives.
Mizoguchi keeps camera movement to a minimum also in order to achieve a separate space for the viewer.  Instead of attempting to draw the viewer into the film, he lets the viewer freely impose only his or her own schema onto what they see.  The mostly inanimate shots evoke a sense that the camera is a lifeless window that the viewer is looking through, not that the viewer is actually seeing the images directly with his or her own eyes.  The shot in which Omocha is cleverly ousting Furusawa from her home is a prime example of this.  This is also a long shot and long take, but there is absolutely no movement in the position of the camera.  The two characters move throughout the area in view and Omocha even leaves the scene to get Furusawa’s coat, yet the camera never follows them to keep them centered and does not cut to follow Omocha when she leaves.
In Mizoguchi’s films many shots are long shots and long takes and he employs minimalist editing.  These shots provide much more information about the space around the characters, and, along with de-centering, provide less concrete anthropological information.  The long shot allows the user to see more of the world around the characters and usually allows the viewer more time to absorb the surroundings.  The details of the characters’ expressions are sacrificed when using a long shot, but this leaves more to the imagination of the viewer.  The careful attention to mise-en-scene in Sisters of Gion is similar to a novel in which the surroundings are painstakingly described to provide the context for a scene and the characterization is built from dialogue and actions.  The psychological characterizations are subject to more interpretation because of this setup.  This is opposed to Western close-ups and inner-monologues that provide every detail of a person’s expression and thoughts leaving no room for divergence within the audience.  The long shot and long take also provide a sense of continuity and realism that cannot be achieved when cuts are involved in a scene of the same length.  A reason realism is elicited is simply because the viewer subconsciously or consciously is aware that the actors had to perform the scene all at once.  This preserves the majesty of live theatre and helps to showcase the actors’ abilities without drawing attention to the technique itself.  This is exemplified in the dramatic scene where the wife of Omocha’s patron is upset with him for engaging in activities with a geisha.  This is a long shot and long take in which the characters’ facial expressions are unrecognizable simply because of the distance, yet the general movements of the characters and their voices are used to create tension.  The camera is positioned perpendicular to the walls of their home and produces a theatrical quality to the shot. And the lack of reverse-field shots between the two characters serves to add realism as there is never a break in real-time.
The comparison to novels can be extended further.  The filmic equivalents of written pieces are often abridged and less open to interpretation because they require less visual imagination in comparison with its inspiration.  Yet a picture is thought to be “worth a thousand words,” so it is only natural some directors would want to create films with shots that can consciously instead of unconsciously elicit a scene in the way in which a scene is created by written words.  A photograph can be carefully examined because it is unchanging.  Long shots and long takes provide enough time for the audience to examine scenes and absorb the mise-en-scene as though the shots were a series of photographs that linger on the screen yet contain a narrative.  Mizoguchi carefully chooses the setup of his shots so that each object contributes a world of text-like information.  Possibly this is more natural for a Japanese director because of the nature of the Japanese written language in which ideograms, like the objects in a shot, are used to convey worlds of meaning.  There is a shot in which Omocha’s future patron is lying to Kimura, his employee who had initially been interested in Omocha, in order to keep Kimura from seeing Omocha again.  This shot is particularly interesting when considering mise-en-scene.  It is a medium long shot in which the two men are each framed by white doors that are angled in the background and separated by a black strip.  A post in the foreground cuts through the image of Kimura’s entire body.  A shot like this suggests careful planning.  Observed within the context of the film, the post cutting through Kimura’s image could be representative of something like his distress over losing Omocha, but like a photograph or any piece of art it is open to interpretation.
All of these aspects of Sisters of Gion serve to distance the viewer so as not to get the viewers’ perception confused with the characters’ perception.  Mizoguchi’s systemics allows for greater personal reflection with regard to a film and provides a logical alternative to the Western systemics.