OSCARS 2026: Kokuho (2025)

 

I enjoy reading about what films are popular overseas but do not connect with an international audience. Most American blockbusters, these days, are made to have a global appeal. However, some countries have their own ingrained film culture that can produce massive successes entirely on their own. For example, I'm fairly certain Japan is the only place in the world where “Kokuho” could become a box office success. A three-hour long epic about the world of kabuki theater, it's unlikely that such a culturally specific film could have emerged from any other country. However, the Japanese love this kind of thing so much that it is now the highest grossing live action film of all time in that country. Though it was Japan's official submission for Best International Feature at 2026's Oscars, the Academy passed it up in that category before giving it a random shout-out in Best Hair and Make-Up. 

It is tradition in kabuki theater that all parts be played by men, even the female roles. Kabuki actors who specializes in feminine performances are known as onnagata. In 1964, Hannai Hanjiro II is one of the most respected kabuki actors in the country. He visits a Yakuza owned club, where the gang leader's 14 year old son, Kikuo, makes his stage debut. When a rival gang attacks, Kikuo's dad is killed. Taking pity on the now orphaned boy, Hanjiro takes Kikuo on as his apprentice. Hanjiro's son, Shunsuke, also trains to become a kabuki actor and quickly befriends Kikuo. In time, they grow to become the two most successful actors on-stage. Kikuo becomes such a success that Hanjiro makes the controversial decision to pass the family mantle onto him and not his own son. The dismayed Shunsuke disappears. Because of his lack of a famous bloodline, Kikuo's popularity quickly fades and his reputation is further tarnished when the Yakuza connection in his past emerges. Shunsuke reappears on-stage and eclipses his rival in popularity soon. As their lives go on – with missing children and complicated legacies and illness going hand-in-hand – the two men cannot give up the allure the stage has over them. 

“Kokuho” – a word that refers to when an actor becomes a living national treasure, by the way – is an epic not because it has an especially wide scope or sweeping vistas and not only because it's long. Instead, the film earns the title by tracking an entire person's life, nearly from beginning to end. The story begins when Kikuo is 14. It ends with him as a grey-haired old man. In that time, his career has wild ups and downs. He fathers a daughter, who grows up too. He has friendships that come and go. His mentors age and die. The film will frequently fade to black with a date and the number of years progressed appearing on stage, jumping ahead to the next chapter. You get a real sense of time passing through this. By the time the film's 175 minute runtime is up, you are left with a real sense of its protagonist's entire existence. 

Of course, not everyone will be willing to invest that much time into a movie about kabuki. And “Kohuko” treats kabuki as extremely serious business. Despite the film being set in what we would call the modern age, the sheer amounts of kimonos and traditional Japanese architecture makes it feel like a story from another time. A great deal of emphasis is placed on family bloodlines, which make these actors feel almost more like samurai or noblemen than mere entertainers. When the family name is passed to Kikuo, a grand theatrical ritual is performed. Kikuo is subjected to intense physical training and repeating the same line over and over again in order to become the best and please his master. He is commanded to put his heart and soul and every fiber of his being into his performance. Kabuki isn't only theater, guys bouncing around on-stage in make-up and elaborate outfits. It's a matter of national honor and an art form for the ages.

As someone with no familiarity with it, kabuki theater admittedly takes some getting used to. The extremely exaggerated make-up and costumes are paired with sparse but repetitive music. The stories are based in Japanese myth and often more allegorical than direct in nature. (To the point that “Kokuho” puts text on-stage to explain what the hell these performances are actually meant to convey.)  Moreover, the style of speech admittedly sounds very foreign to my ears, the way sounds and words are stretched out into reverberating moans or ghostly howls. Despite how alien this all seems, “Kohuko” does a good job of conveying the degree of awe the art form inspires in its characters. Watching the strange dancing and singing is certainly something to behold. My favorite has two actors playing lions spinning their manes around. Another play has the actors leaping out of their silken robes and into another outfit suddenly, an admittedly striking sight. A key moment has Kikuo watching a great legend perform and is so impressed that he literally sees sparks in the sky. This is a reoccurring idea in “Kokuho,” that art is transcendent. I don't think I would ever pay to watch a kabuki play on its own but, by the end of “Kokuho,” I think I was starting to understand why this is such a heavily ritualized, important tradition in its home country. 

The idea of men playing women on-stage, essentially putting on elaborate drag to inhabit another gender, is an idea that obviously has some interesting connotations. Several brief moments call attention to Kikuo's Adam's apple jutting out of his throat under the white make-up that is meant to make him a woman. Despite the gender-fluid nature of his art form, the guy is very straight, having sex with women and even getting the hyper-macho Yakuza tattoo on his back. Yet one can certainly read into his intense bond with Shunsuke. The two are brothers and rivals and, on-stage, play lovers a few times too. The finale has both sickly and elderly, holding onto each other physically as if their lives depend on it. Another moment has Kikuo, during a downturn in his career, being attacked backstage but thugs, in a manner that reads very much like a sexual assault. The text of “Kohuko” never acknowledges the obvious queer undercurrents to all of this. Maybe in Japan – which has been both unexpectedly accepting of homosexuality and deeply prejudiced towards it over the centuries – the cross-dressing element of kabuki is so ingrained in the culture that it doesn't read as homoerotic at all. However, this is a movie about the bond between two men and I don't think the film is entirely unaware of the implications.

It helps that the acting is very strong throughout too. Ken Watanabe is excellent as the stern, often disapproving mentor and father figure. Ryo Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama are both deeply committed to making Kikuo and Shunsuke fully fleshed out human beings. While the theatrics of kabuki certainly look and sound strange to my stupid American eyes and ears, the film successfully conveys the degree of emotion the actors put into it. When combined with an observant story about the complications we feel towards the closest people in our lives sometimes, “Kokuho” is quite involving. [7/10]