• 国宝 (Kokuho)

6/21/25 (Sat)

Lee Sang-il’s story of a Kabuki rivalry, based on a best-selling novel, examines a world where blood is thicker than talent, as two onnagata (female-role specialists) vie for National Treasure (kokuho) status: one has the bloodline but not the innate skill, the other is the opposite. Some critics have seen similarities with the Chinese opera world in Farewell, My Concubine, but that’s only in the use of onnagata, which is just skin deep. The film has proven an unlikely success despite its three-hour running time, drawing in nearly 4 million viewers and over ¥5 billion (figures updated as of mid July).（Update: As of November 25, those figures have grown to 12.3 million viewers and nearly ¥17.4bn in revenues, making it Japan’s highest-grossing live action film ever. That’s before its debut in the US and other major markets.) 

The teenaged Kikuo is adopted into a prominent Kabuki family when his father, a yakuza boss, is killed in a gang war. Hanjiro, the family head and a star onnagata, is impressed by Kikuo’s natural dance skills and dismisses his wife’s concern over the boy’s background. He brings Kikuo into his home and trains him alongside his own son Shunsuke, who is around the same age. Shunsuke, the presumed heir of the Hanjiro name, would have been training and appearing on stage since childhood (the progeny of such stars generally make their stage debuts at around 5 or 6).

The two teens undergo spartan training, including considerable mental and physical abuse, and become close friends. It soon becomes clear, however, that Kikuo is Mozart to Shunsuke’s Salieri: the former has an intrinsic genius for the art, while the latter has the all-important bloodline that is so important in the Kabuki world, where the art is passed down personally from generation to generation. Kikuo is particularly awed by a performance of The Heron Maiden by the actor Mangiku, who is designated a National Living Treasure (kokuho) by the Japanese government, and vows against all odds to reach the same heights. Mangiku acknowledges the boy’s beauty and talent but warns him that his face can be a curse, i.e., beware of the temptation to rely on youth and looks alone.

Flash forward, and the boys are now in their 20s. Their rivalry has remained friendly, and they often dance together on stage. Things come to a head, however, when Hanjiro is injured just days before a performance and, Kabuki having no understudies, must pick a replacement. To the mother’s horror, he chooses Kikuo, putting art over family and tradition.

Shunsuke is overwhelmed by Kikuo’s brilliance and is forced to recognize his own limits as an artist. He disappears in despair, followed by Kikuo’s childhood sweetheart Harue. Kikuo, meanwhile, becomes friendly with a geisha and has a daughter with her.

Several years later, Hanjiro, against his wife’s virulent protestations, officially names Kikuo as his successor. As they parade in the streets, Kikuo’s young daughter excitedly runs up to his carriage, only to be completely ignored. At the name accession performance, the aged Hanjiro collapses. In his dying breath, it is Shunsuke whom he calls.

Shunsuke, who has apparently been performing independently, returns to a blissful welcome and immediately takes the stage under a new name. Kikuo, meanwhile, has the Hanjiro name but, with his mentor’s death, has lost his primary backer. He wins the support of another Kabuki star, but unwisely sleeps with the latter’s daughter. The star explodes, not least because of Kikuo’s gangster background (not to mention the child he seems to have forgotten), and effectively banishes him from the business.

Kikuo ends up performing his onnagata pieces in low-end countryside establishments for bored customers, none of whom seem to know who he is (or was). At one point, he is beaten up by drunken thugs when they discover that he’s a man.

He is summoned by Mangiku, who is on his death bed. Mangiku, alone in a dilapidated room with only a cot and a doll, asks Kikuo to dance for him. Kikuo is then called in by Shunsuke, who wants to perform together. The challenge: Shunsuke reveals that his leg must be amputated due to severe diabetes (which plagued his father as well — the bloodline is both privilege and curse). He nevertheless wants to perform the iconic Sonezaki Love Suicide with Kikuo, taking the female lead. They amazingly carry off that difficult feat in a moving sequence. Ultimately Shunsuke dies.

Some years later, Kikuo, now 50, has been designated a National Living Treasure, realizing his long-held dream. A reporter interviewing him reveals that she is the daughter he abandoned many years earlier. Though filled with anger and regret, she confesses that she was enchanted by his dancing. In the end, Kikuo dances Mangiku’s celebrated The Heron Maiden, the dance that drew him to the art, thus closing the circle.

The two leads, Yoshizawa Ryo (Kikuo) and Yokohama Ryusei (Shunsuke) are spectacular. (In an unfortunate parallel to the film, Yoshizawa was involved in a drunken scandal early this year that threatened to derail the film’s debut, but after a round of apologies, all seems to have been forgiven.) The actors reportedly had to train as onnagata for one to two years, and their performances after that short period are exceptional. I had wondered why the director didn’t simply use Kabuki actors, who obviously wouldn’t need such training, but I realized upon seeing the film that it is not about the Kabuki itself but about the people behind it, which requires real acting. (That also explains why Kabuki producer Shochiku didn’t make this since it would have had to draw from its stable of Kabuki actors.) While the story rests on some extremely dubious assumptions – Hanjiro’s decision to pass his storied name on outside the family, Kikuo’s impossible drop into cheap hotel shows and anonymity despite his previous fame, the selection of a yakuza’s kid (complete with full body tattoo) as a National Treasure – and is Sirk-like heavy on the melodrama, it does examine its primary theme of tradition vs. talent with some subtlety. The constant images of snow are like Kikuo’s Rosebud, reflecting both the snow falling on the day his father was murdered and that in The Heron Maiden. The final image of him as the heron dancing in the stage snow was hauntingly beautiful.

Terashima Shinobu, who plays the Kabuki scion’s wife and is herself from a noted Kabuki family (her brother is currently celebrating his accession to their father’s stage name), says in the program booklet that while the idea of an actor passing over his son and bestowing his name outside the bloodline is unthinkable, it shouldn’t be. I can attest to a clear talent gap in not-a-few cases between actors and their kids in the Kabuki world, including some major stars, and a bit of competition would be worth considering as long as a personal tie from the older to younger generation is maintained during the training period.

The cinematography by Tunisia-born Sofian El Fani is stunning, helped perhaps by his lack of any preconceived notions about the art or even the language. Actors are meant to be seen from the stage, of course, and close-ups are not always flattering, but we’re watching them, not their characters, and we get a great sense of them as human beings striving at their art. I was especially impressed when the camera focuses on Kikuo from below as he is being lifted from underground onto the stage. Very cool.

The starry cast is uniformly strong. Aside from the two leads, the best is a wary and rather fey Tanaka Min (Perfect Days) as Mangiku, who gives a great sense of a performer who truly lives for his art – which, in this inimitable actor/dancer’s case, is probably real. Watanabe Ken is a dignified Hanjiro. Kabuki veteran Ganjiro (who played in my Kabuki Madame Butterfly), also excellent, is a terrific choice for another meta-reason: his father, a real-life National Treasure, was a sensation in Sonezaki Love Suicide, the very play shown in the film. When the grandfather, playing the male lead, became ill at one point, it was Ganjiro who was chosen to take over, eerily reflecting the scene in the film. (I had assumed the play was chosen for that reason, but in fact it’s in the original novel.) Interestingly Ganjiro doesn’t perform Kabuki in the film, but having him there as a consultant, alongside Terashima, must have been a huge help to the cast in ensuring the authenticity of backstage life.

The film does not feel its three-hour length despite the considerable dance portions, helped by the inventive direction and evocative settings. The slump into sentimental slop, especially the absurd scenes with the once-celebrated Kikuo struggling unknown in the boondocks (Japan’s notorious tabloids would have outed him instantly) and Hanjiro’s dumb on-stage death, reek of laziness on the writer’s part; it would have been just as humiliating for Kikuo, for example, to have to perform in cheap shows in Tokyo. A little more care in the story development would have made this a whole different experience.

Still, audiences don’t seem to mind, and the iconic pieces featured have happily brought the joys of Kabuki to a wider audience. Whether that brings new fans to live Kabuki theater remains to be seen, but in any case, it offers an interesting perspective on a thought-provoking theme. Recommended.