When Kokuho picked up a single nomination – for best hair and make-up – at this year’s Academy Awards, it was a surprise. But the Japanese epic, which follows the coming-of-age and career of a fictional actor (Ryo Yoshizawa) adopted by a legendary theatre star (Ken Watanabe) after his father was killed by rival yakuza, had already become the highest-grossing live-action film of all time in Japan. It's easy to see how a story of fraternal rivalry, betrayal and redemption set in the highest echelons of kabuki, the traditional Japanese theatre style, struck a chord with a large domestic audience – and the international acclaim for its authentic and striking kabuki make-up is another no-brainer.

There are many strands of classical Japanese theatre – including noh dramas and bunraku puppet theatre – but kabuki distinguishes itself with exaggerated performance and dance, a musical blend of heavy percussion and elongated melodies, and stock characters often taken from legend and folklore. It’s an intensely sensory mode of theatre that can be traced back to a female dancer, Izumo no Okuni, in the 17th century, but the subsequent outlawing of women on stage led to one of kabuki’s main traditions: onnagata, men who play lead female roles. 

The significance of kabuki in Japanese society – the dynasties of famous actors who pass down their stage name to male heirs, the allegorical play structures, and the intensive technique men follow while playing female roles – makes it a ripe source of melodrama and stylistic invention for Japanese artists who have been inspired and impacted by classical theatre.

To mark the UK release of Kokuho, here is a guide to the films that tackle the onstage and offstage drama of kabuki theatre. 

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939)

Kenji Mizoguchi’s story of a young kabuki actor growing uncomfortable with shouldering his famous father’s legacy shares more similarities with Kokuho than any other film – not only are both protagonists adopted into a historic acting family, but they each trace the rise, fall and redemption of an artist who falls out of favour and is forced to flog their talents in poverty. The heart of Mizoguchi’s film is not the initially mediocre actor Kikunosuke (Shōtarō Hanayagi), but the unlikely, scandalous object of his affections – his brother’s wet nurse, Otoku (Kakuko Mori), who’s the only one to not obligingly flatter him. Mizoguchi’s film is a major and moving drama about the social dynamics that supported the 19th century Japanese theatre world.

Floating Weeds (1959)

For his second colour film, Yasujirō Ozu remade one of his own silent dramas, vividly restaging his 1934 story of a small kabuki troupe visiting a seaside town so the troupe leader can see his former mistress and illegitimate son. Ozu’s typically immaculate compositions ground us in the town’s quotidian environments, including the theatre where audiences dwindle, the backstage areas where tensions flare, and the sea banks and sake bars where actors lounge in the heat, speculating on their distracted boss and fading prospects. Unlike the epic performances in legitimate theatres seen elsewhere on this list, there is little grandeur to separate the actors and audience, and behind the main family drama, the troupe’s unity and loyalty is tested by their long inactive spells, as the performers consider their own individual, contradictory desires.

An Actor’s Revenge (1963)

Since his parents were driven to suicide by a callous magistrate and his cronies, Yukinojō (Kazuo Hasegawa) has been raised and trained by an Osaka kabuki master. Now an accomplished onnagata, he plots his revenge against his parents’ killers, dazzling his targets and committing to his guarded, effeminate offstage persona so he can get close enough to deal a fatal blow. Kon Ichikawa’s revenge drama is bookended with glimpses of Yukinojō’s stage presence, drawing a line between his painful mission and the heightened, explosive emotions seen onstage in kabuki plays. It’s as if performing hasn’t only trained the actor to master focus and discipline, but also offered an expressive outlet for his grief and vengeance; Ichikawa’s stylish revenge film reimagines the onnagata as a genderfluid vessel for both parents’ suffering.

Demon Pond (1979)

Masahiro Shinoda’s Demon Pond does not adapt a classic, centuries-old kabuki play, but rather a semi-modernist one written by Kyōka Izumi in 1913. In the film, a Tokyo schoolteacher unexpectedly reunites with an old friend in a remote, drought-stricken village. The friend’s wife, Yuri, is nervous about the disruption to their serene, isolated life; she may be a sorceress connected to the nearby dragon god who will unleash a flood on the village unless a bell is rung three times every day. Shinoda takes inspiration from kabuki’s bold, fluid tones and retells the folkloric story with ecstatic effects and costuming, but the biggest nod to the theatre tradition is the casting of famed onnagata actor Bandō Tamasaburō, who is commanding as both Yuri and the dragon princess.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

As a child, Yukio Mishima was obsessed with traditional Japanese theatre, and he would later write several noh and kabuki plays. In Paul Schrader’s ambitious biopic of the reactionary writer and militant, young Mishima (Masato Aizawa) is taken to see a kabuki play for the first time by his overbearing grandmother. Mishima catches sight of the backstage area, where an onnagata actor casually smokes a cigarette in female dress and make-up. It’s a moment of both sexual and artistic awakening, an idea Schrader returns to by staging Mishima’s stories of agony, pleasure and national symbols on dazzling soundstage sets, complete with vibrant lighting and Philip Glass’s ecstatic score. While Mishima’s own kabuki plays were straightforwardly comic, Schrader interprets Mishima’s first encounter with theatre as a discovery of art’s intriguing erotic appeal.

Read our interview with Paul Schrader here. 

Sing, Dance, Act: Kabuki (2022)

For a detailed look at the process of staging a kabuki play today, the Netflix documentary Sing, Dance, Act: Kabuki captures the process of Toma Ikuta, best known for being in a teenage boy band which turned into a successful screen career, in rehearsing and performing in his first kabuki play. His debut pairs him with childhood friend and experienced stage actor Matsuya Onoe, whose real family history with kabuki invokes the themes of intergenerational legacy seen in these fictional films. Ikuta throws himself into his intimidating assignment, and the scenes where the actor grapples with the particulars of kabuki’s exacting performance style – like the precise timing and facial expression he must hit for his character’s all-important “mie pose” (a posture struck by kabuki actors at a climactic moment in the play) – are compelling and insightful.

Kokuho is out in UK cinemas now.