HooDoo,
Your reply is effectively missing 
Sorry about that.
I own it too, absolutely great catfight!
What makes it even more special is the timing. During the '70s, due to cultural and social hierarchy differences, Japan reacted to the self reflections of 1968 about a decade later. This was the time when they first acknowledged not having waged a merely defensive war (up until then, and in the 21st century ever since, the mantra was and is that starting with the war against China in 1894 every war they had been about protecting something historically theirs) and acknowledged mistreatment toward foreigners and women. Write this up, as this is one of the few good things Nixon did besides declaring that smoking kills and burning rivers are not okay.
In that milieu, novels like these could be published, critical of past Japanese warmongering and the wholesale of domestic and foreign girls into prostitution to appease the ever growing colonial industrial complex. Nowadays, if the had the budget, only AV studios could make this movie for foreign consumption, that is if you recall the mainstream reaction to Memoirs of a Geisha. To be conservative in Japan means bury your head in the sand and pretend no bad things ever happened, especially to the most pristine girls of the nation.
In essence, Momokawa wishes to shed her past self, and with it any connection to her deadbeat father, but this fight is of course about more than just a prostitute wanting to become a geisha. For one, like many fathers, Momokawa's, for every of his faults, has a hard time expressing that he actually cares about his daughter, so his lover wishes to excise her out of his heart forever. Two, the prostitute would effective become haha, respected mother. Since she's a bitch on wheels, that's of course something she couldn't allow. Because here's reason 3, and you can see that after the dance off when she flaunts her leg at the table drinking beer, like a sailor... being a geisha means high cultured and high cultured means high respect.
It's clear, as it is spoken during the fight that the prostitute despises the Yokiroh for the exact reason that girls like her are robbed of opportunities for the sake of girls who can then play the obina on Girl's Day (obina are the top tier dolls representing the prince/emperor and princess/empress). In conclusion, just like Lust and Caution in China, this novel unabashedly explores the unequal relationship between men and women, the hidden side of female relationships, and did so with an honest account. It may take an additional 2 or 3 more decades for such a work to come out of Japan again.
