Kokuho review – a kabuki star is born

Within a short time of being introduced to the budding kabuki performer at the centre of Lee Sang-il’s hit Japanese film Kokuho, a character cuttingly offers an observation about his trajectory: ​“Your beautiful face might consume you.” These words, paired with the jealousy-tinged gazes of everyone in the kabuki game as Kikuo embeds himself in this realm of traditional theatre, are those that come to define his career as a kabuki actor.

It goes beyond actor Ryo Yoshizawa’s lovely face, but the way he performs for both the audiences and the camera itself, his emotions transcending the kumadori make-up these actors wear. Through his tale and all the ways that the people around him seek to delegitimise his work, we are granted a glimpse of the world of kabuki and all the drama and history that comes with it.

Rather than spend any of its three-hour runtime giving a crash course on the art of kabuki, Kokuho economically presents the basics through the way Kikuo’s teacher, Hanjiro Hanai (played by Ken Watanabe), offers lessons to his students, as well as short captions explaining the plots of individual performances. This allows the viewer to draw their own thematic connections to the overarching narrative. That narrative spans decades, from the 1960s to the present day, intimately homing in on one man’s journey through the ages and all he must overcome to share his expertise with the world.

In many ways, Kokuho is a classically made motion picture, one that is perhaps best described as an interpretation of A Star Is Born. The lives and careers of the kabuki performers present – Kikuo, his rival Shunsuke (Ryusei Yokohama) and the various old masters whose lessons often fall on deaf ears – are what Lee is fixated on, than the art form itself. And while all the variations on A Star​’s formula are tailored to a specific moment in time, what’s most interesting about Kokuho is the way it trails through an extended period of Japanese history, embedding one in the culture without feeling the need to explain its appeal.

Satoko Okudera’s script is prone to tragic beats and characters explaining their actions for audiences who seemingly cannot process visual cues (as is the sweeping music that punctuates many a moment) and occasionally feels at odds with Lee’s direction. Selling the audience on an art form worth sacrificing everything for is key to this kind of film and Lee sells it through gorgeous colours, and snatches of various productions Kikuo and Shunsuke perform in, with its repetition of The Love Suicides at Sonezaki and The Heron Maiden being key to its emotional success. 

These scenes lend a weight to everything in Kokuho, from it approach to Kikuo’s otherness – itself grounded in the legitimacy of his lineage (not having an actor father) as opposed to equating performing as a woman to queerness – to the fractured but compelling relationships at its core. All the affairs, deaths, animosity and dinner theatre in the world couldn’t stop a man like Kikuo. How he navigates all that to prove himself as the greatest star is nothing short of intoxicating.