‘Kokuho' finds riveting drama on and off the kabuki stage

Japan Times

08-06-2025

Films set in the kabuki world are few, understandably so since the challenge of getting it right is so great. Daniel Schmid's "The Written Face" (1995) and Yukiko Takayama's 'The Maid of Dojoji Temple' (2004) managed it by casting real-life onnagata, players of female roles in all-male kabuki, as leads: Bando Tamasaburo V in the former film, Nakamura Fukusuke VIII in the latter.
Based on Shuichi Yoshida's two-part novel, Lee Sang-il's monumentally ambitious and visually sumptuous 'Kokuho' takes another approach, with two young non-kabuki actors playing rivals-slash-friends in Kamigata kabuki, which once flourished in the Kansai region that encompasses Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe.
The film, which was made with kabuki star Nakamura Ganjiro IV as adviser, brilliantly solves the authenticity problem, at least to the eyes of this non-expert. Stars Ryo Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama spent months training to deliver stage performances that, captured by cinematographer Sofian El Fani's fluid and insinuating camerawork, are both convincing as kabuki and arresting as drama.
Also, the glimpses of their off-stage lives, from the application of their elaborate make-up to backstage tensions and business calculations, feel like insider immersions, however brief.
The film's story, scripted by Satoko Okudera, may turn shouty and even violent at times, but transforms Yoshida's doorstop of a novel into a tightly focused, if episodic, narrative that under Lee's assured direction rarely flags despite the film's nearly three-hour running time.
Covering a span of five decades, it begins in 1964 with the shocking killing of a Nagasaki yakuza boss (Masatoshi Nagase) by a rival gang as his teenage son Kikuo (Soya Kurokawa) looks on. Fast forward a year to Osaka, after the boy's failed attempt at revenge, when he is accepted as an apprentice by Hanjiro Hanai (a fierce-eyed Ken Watanabe), the head of a local kabuki troupe.
Starting leagues behind Hanjiro's son, Shunsuke (Keitatsu Koshiyama), who was born into the kabuki world, Kikuo quickly and enthusiastically catches up, even though Hanjiro is a harsh taskmaster.
Jump head again to 1972, when Kikuo (Yoshizawa) and Shunsuke (Yokohama) create a sensation appearing together as onnagata in the kabuki dance 'Futari Fuji Musume' ('Two Wisteria Maidens'). But it is Kikuo, with his pop-idol good looks and burning passion for kabuki, whose star shines brighter. Nonetheless, he and the talented, if not as driven, Shunsuke remain close friends, like comrades in arms who know each other as no outsiders can.
This friendship, however, is shaken when Hanjiro chooses Kikuo to star solo in the classic Chikamatsu Monzaemon play 'The Love Suicides at Sonezaki.' He is again a hit with audiences, but a disappointed Shunsuke departs from the troupe.
From this point, not halfway in the story, it seems obvious that Kikuo, not Shunsuke, is destined to become the title ningen kokuhō (living national treasure) — a high honor awarded by the national government to masters of a traditional art or craft.
Kikuo's path to this pinnacle is anything but smooth, however, and Shunsuke later resurfaces, his dream of kabuki glory still alive, if not well. Both men have women in their lives, but whether as a wife (Shunsuke's) or lover (Kikuo's) they leave little impression.
Instead, the film's central relationship remains that between Kikuo and Shunsuke, through illness, setbacks and, in Kikuo's case, growing isolation as his art becomes both his life and the core of his being. 'Kokuho' gorgeously and starkly shows us both his triumph and tragedy.