Review of Kokuho (2025)
Seen in 2026.
Seen in a packed theatre on the unofficial opening night of Göteborg Film Festival 2026. Superimposed captions had been added to outline the plot of each play in a sentence.
A drama that encompasses the entire adult life of Kikuo, the main character, is punctuated by his performances as an actor, including two productions of an adapted The Love Suicides at Sonezaki. He plays in traditional kabuki theatre and is dedicated to women’s roles (onnagata). Literal women were banned from appearing on the kabuki stage in 1629, and the business is so traditional that Kikuo’s position is precarious because he wasn’t born into it.
The theatrical performances seem to be meditations on art. Outside of those performances, the acting is already stylized, to the point that sound effects are added to a nose bleed. Inside, a film score is sometimes added to the gorgeous sounds of a full kabuki choir and orchestra, and minor visual effects to the image. It’s artifice on top of artifice, as befits all surviving types of traditional Japanese theatre.
Gender, however, is secondary. Tanaka Min’s excellent performance as Onogawa Mangiku is ambiguous, but Kikuo and his rival are cishet men. This isn’t Yuri on Ice (2016) or Heated Rivalry (2025). It is not romantic love that drives any of the men, and the women—unfortunately—are all in their shadow.
Kikuo is driven by his love of the art. That love is honed to a paranoid point, starting with a word from the dastardly Takeno, a minor but consistently returning character played by Miura Takahiro. Takahiro is scene-stealingly funny in that role, which I think is unintentional. Everyone is completely straight-faced around this contemptuos corporate manager who becomes a patron of kabuki because, I think, his boss—played chin out by Shimada Kyūsaku—is into it and it’s something the rich were expected to do in the 1970s.
At $8 million, the production is on the cheap side for a film of this length, and it shows. A few plot points are fumbled among all the actor replacements, but I’m a sucker for long-term linear dramas and I was not disappointed.