Kokuho: The Japanese film sensation breaking records and revitalising traditional kabuki

When the Japanese drama Kokuho was released in its homeland in June, it didn’t quite pop immediately.

That weekend, audiences were more enamoured with Hollywood imports Lilo & Stitch and the final Mission: Impossible instalment than a historical family saga that took place in the world of kabuki theatre.

But great reviews and word-of-mouth activated people and in week two, it climbed up a spot. By week three, Kokuho was number one, and then went on to break a 22-year-old record to become the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film in its home territory.

It is Japan’s entry into the Oscars international feature category this year.

Even more significantly on a wider cultural level, kabuki companies have reported a 30 per cent increase in attendance for their stage productions compared to the same time last year, and a lot of those extra bums on seats have been young people.

That’s a game-changer for an art form with a legacy that stretches back four centuries in a country where anime and franchises have dominated audience attention.

For Kokuho’s director, Lee Sang-il, remembered the first time he went to a kabuki show, he was in high school, and he “might have fallen asleep”.

Despite that initiation, Kokuho has been a passion project for him for the past 15 years, having had his interest piqued by a famed onnagata (a male performer who specialises in female roles) named Utaemon Nakamura.

The film was based on a book by Shuichi Yoshida, who wrote the novel after a chat with Sang.

The story follows two men across five decades, starting in their teens when one of them, Kikuo (Ryo Yoshizawa), the son of a murdered yakuza boss, is adopted by a famous kabuki performer played by Ken Watanabe, and raised alongside his son, Shunsuke (Ryusei Yokohama).

The two men’s relationship is characterised by a rivalry for the patriarch’s esteem, attention and affection, as they come in and out of each other’s personal and professional lives. At the height of their creative partnership, they come together for performances playing dual roles.

The core of the conflict involves the issue of lineage, with kabuki handed down from father to son.

“When it comes to kabuki, westerners would have a broad understanding of it as a traditional artform, but when they find out that it is held together by these hereditary bloodlines and traditions, they might be a little surprised,” Sang told The Nightly.

“The bloodline is a wonderful thing on the one hand, but on the other, the practicalities of that brings about responsibilities and a certain destiny. These then bring about conflict and pain in their lives.”

Kokuho features many scenes of kabuki performance, captured by Sang and his cinematographer, Sofian El Fani. For newcomers to the artform, it is a revealing, immersive experience.

For Sang, the kabuki performances are interwoven with the human drama behind the scenes. His leads spent more than a year learning and rehearsing the specifics of the craft, although Sang admitted he himself never got up on stage to get a feel for it.

“It’s not one or the other. Both aspects are interlocked. What did interest me was no so much introducing kabuki itself, but more the people who are involved with kabuki.”

While he may have dozed off the first time he saw kabuki, the process of making this film means he now understands it much more.

“There’s a big difference in going to see kabuki theatre with knowing and not knowing. For instance, you have these things called devices. So, the devices that are featured in the performances, there are a lot of invested meanings in those things. If you can decode it, then it’s a lot more interesting.”

But that doesn’t mean you need to be a kabuki afficionado for Kokuho. “The subject matter is kabuki, but the real idea in this film is about people and how they commit to their craft or their art, which will translate across the world.

“This is a film about that relationship of humans committing to their artform and the drama that emerges from that.”

The two characters, Kikuo and Shunsuke, are only as fractured or entwined because of their shared devotion to the art. The art is the reason, not the smokescreen.

Sang explained that when he started noodling about this film, it had more a Shakespearean conception of passion and emotions, and how jealousy and envy would destroy each other. But in the time that passed, it morphed into something else.

“Over 15 years, the subject matter changed slightly because the world changed,” he said. “Even in Japan, there’s this anxiety about the future.

“When you look at that, then I don’t think you could send out into the world another project about envy, desire, greed and so forth, and the undoing of people.

“It was more important to present this reflection of the inner beauty that comes out of their commitment to their craft.”

It’s obviously a mood shift that has resonated with audiences in Japan, and maybe now it will also around the world. More art, less destruction.

Kokuho is in cinemas now