“Kokoho” literally means “country treasure” and is usually translated into English “National Treasure” as in the popular Japanese term “Ningen Kokuhō” The more formal designation is Preservers of Important Intangible Cultural Properties (重要無形文化財保持者, Jūyō Mukei Bunkazai Hojisha). The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology certifies individuals and subsidizes each person with 2 million yen per year.
Subsidizing National Treasures are part of the national budget. The maximum people who can be so designated at one time are 116. No new designations are made until a deal opens up a vacancy. As of 2020, 371 have received the Living National Treasure designation and as of 1 February 2021, 111 of them are still alive.
The film “Kokoho” is about a man, Kikuo Tachibana 立花喜久雄（花井東一郎→三代目 花井半二郎）, with a natural talent in Kabuki. By birth, Kikuo (Ryo Yoshizawa 吉沢亮 ) was destined for yakuza, perhaps, even as a godfather figure. When we first meet him, he’s taking part in a New Year’s celebration and narrowly avoids being slain by a rival gang although he along with Kabuki actor Hanai Hanjiro II (Ken Watanabe) watch is Kikuo’s father Gongorō (Masatoshi Nagase) being assassinated. This could have become a revenge movie and there is an attempt to exact revenge, but instead, the 15-year-old Kikuo enters the Kabuki family headed by Hanai and is trained along side Hanai’s actual son, Shunsuke Ōgaki (Ryusei Yokohama).
Kikuo’s stage name Toichio and trains with Shunsuke whose stage name is Hanya. Although initially the relationship is brotherly, a rivalry rises between Kikuo and Shunsuke. Another onnagata, Living National Treasure Mangiku warns Kikuo that his beautiful face may be his downfall.
“Kokoho” is mainly about tradition, duty versus human feeling and suffering for art, it also exposes gender as a cultural construct.
Kabuki
When I first went to Japan, one of our cultural outings was to the Kabuki-za in Tokyo. I would go there a few more times. Later, I had an opportunity to use what I learned at a part-time job as a waitress. I, for the first time, wore a yukata and carried trays of food and served tea. Wearing a kimono isn’t easy and even some Japanese-born women don’t do it well, striding about with the lower part of the kimono flapping open.
Kabuki is still a world of men with men specializing in playing women’s roles. These men are called onnagata. Watch carefully. One’s shoulders should be rounded rather than square and straight. Look at how the women walk, knees together, toes in. To go up steps one must approach them from the side. One never reaches too far up because the straight line of the kimono fold at the waist will come undone. Sitting, one cannot lean back because of the obi. Serving tea, one must gently sweep the kimono sleeves to one side.
The current all-male cast of Kabuki contrasts its origin. A woman, Izumo no Okuni, began performing popular dance, songs and sketches in 1603 (onna kabuki). Her audience were the commoners. But by 1629, women were banned because they corrupted public morals. In their place, young boys began to portray women in what was known as wakashu kabuki. The young boys were banned in 1652 after violent fights broke out as male patrons fought over the affections of popular young male actors and this also supposedly corrupted public morals. After that adult men began to specialize in female roles and thus we have the onnagata. Kabuki continued to develop and with its popularity began to use distinctive makeup (kumadori) and stage devices like the hanamichi walkway and, of course, elaborate costumes.
Because Kabuki began serving the common people, some of the featured dramas were ripped of the headlines, or at least notorious real-life incidents such those of forbidden love: double suicides. While England had Shakespeare and the star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, the Japanese had “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki” (Sonezaki Shinjū) and “The Love Suicides at Amijima” (Shinjū Ten no Amijima). Both of those plays were written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Worse, from Edo’s ruling class point of view would be the “Love Suicides at Mt. Toribe” (Toribeyama Shinjū) because the love story is about a samurai and a courtesan. All of these feature the conflict between duty and social obligations (giri) and love (ninjō). The usual Japanese word for suicide is jisatsu (自殺). Shinjū (心中）literally means “heart” and “middle” and can be translated as “love suicides” or “double suicides.” During those times, people were sometimes inspired to follow their hearts and commit suicide together and this led to more government restrictions on Kabuki.
For “Kokuhō,” however, the Kabuki play chosen for the two rivals derives from an old legend, “Dōjōji” (道成寺). “Dōjōji” is an actual Buddhist temple (Tendai school). Founded in the Nara period in 1357, the temple is in the Wakayama Prefecture in Hidakagawa. The temple has statues that have been designated as National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties, and the temple is designated as a National Historic Site.
The Noh play “Dōjōji” is about the monk Anchin (安珍) who is pursued by a woman Kiyohime (清姫). In the play, Anchin had made an annual trip to the Kumano Sanzan shrine and each time he would stop at the house of Kiyohime’s father. As a joke, the father tells his daughter that when she is old enough, she will become Anchin’s wife. When Kiyohime asks Anchin to marry her, he refuses and flees. He crosses the river and enters Dōjōji where he asks the priests there to hide him. They hide him under a bell. Kiyohime in her rage has transformed into a giant snake. She wraps herself around the bell and the bell becomes white-hot, burning Anchin to death. In the Noh play, the servants learn about Kiyohime from the priest when the dedication of a new bell fails because while women were forbidden at the dedication ceremony, a female dancer does attend. The priest explains that the vengeful spirit of Kiyohime continues to haunt the temple. The servants perform an exorcism, forcing the female dancer who has turned into a demon serpent to leave by jumping into the river and vanishing.
One of the variations of this play is called ” Ninin Dōjōji (“Two Maidens at Dōjōji Temple”), a variation of the famous Kyōganoko Musume Dōjōji. In this play, two shirabyōshi dancers, Hanako and Sakurako, celebrate a new bell at the temple, performing intricate dances before revealing their jealous and ferociously passionate nature.
“Kokuhō” and Contemporary Kabuki
The film is based on Shuichi Yoshida’s 2018 novel of the same name. The film is set in the 1960s to 1980s, a time when Kabuki was undergoing renewed interest, largely due to one actor: Bandō Tamasaburō V ((五代目 坂東 玉三郎). Born in 1950 (Tokyo), he was adopted by Morita Kan’ya XIV (十四代目 守田 勘弥; 8 March 1907 – 28 March 1975), a Kabuki actor who was best known for playing young handsome lovers (tachiyaku or tateyaku 立役) in a wagoto style (和事) and Morita had also been adopted into a Kabuki family.
In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a “Tamasaburo Boom” and he attracted new audiences not only by performing in Kabuki, but also by performing Noh plays, collaborating with international artists and appearing in films. In Kabuki, Tamasaburo V is best known for “The Heron Maiden” and for the courtesan Abenaki in “Sukeroku: Flower of Edo” (Sukeroku Yukari no Edozakura).
“The Heron Maiden” is about a woodcutter who saves a white heron. The heron returns to him in the form of a beautiful young woman. The dance involves a series of costume changes (bukkaeri or hikinuki). The first change depicts a young maiden in love dressed in a red kimono. The next dance is about sadness and jealousy. The final segment brings the spirit of the heron back as the heron pleads for pity.
The play is based on a folktale about a man who save a white heron or crane that has been injured. The bird returns as a woman and the young man marries the woman. The woman is a weaver and cautions her husband never to watch her weaving, but he can’t resist. Once she realizes he knows her secret, she returns to her true form and flies away.
“The Heron Maiden” is the last piece that is performed in “Kokuhō.”
In an interview, Tamasaburō said, “Even is I transform to a woman on stage, I am a man. I’ve never been a woman. The concept of onnagata is how a man imagines a woman. It’s nothing more than a mental construction, a masculine ideal of a woman.”
From “Kokohō,” one then understand that Kikuo learns what the ideal woman should be from his relationships with other women and what he, as a man, wants. One can also see that he has a. lot in common with geisha, Fujikoma (ai Mikami) he meets: The geisha and the onnagata both aim to project an image that appeals to Japanese men. The contrast is that while both need to attract male patrons, in Kabuki, the world on stage is still a world dominated by men. The traditional geisha world was one of the few spaces in Japanese culture dominated by women.
Tale of Genji, the Pretty Boy Problem and Love at First Sight
While the novel “Kokuhō” is written by a man describing the male world, the script is written by a woman. Women looking at men has a long tradition in Japanese. The scene in the film where a man is surprised and angry that he has felt attraction to a man (Kikuo) playing a woman reminded me of a gentler version of Japanese men confronting the betrayal of their eyes to their carnal desires.
In the world’s first novel, “Genji Monogatari” or “The Tale of Genji” the shining prince and his friends discuss what makes the perfect woman in Chapter II, “The Broom-Tree.” Genji has a large collection of letters from women. Genji tells his companion, Tō no Chūjō, “I divide women into three classes. Those of high rank and birth are made such a fuss of and their weak points are so completely concealed that we are certain to be told that they are paragons. About those of the middle class everyone is allowed to express his own opinion, and we shall have much conflicting evidence to sift. As for the lower classes, they do not concern us.”
Hidari no Uma no Kami and Tō Shikibu no Jō join the two. As Uma no Kami discusses women, Genji falls asleep. In the Arthur Waley translation the scene describes Genji in this manner: “He was dressed in a suit of soft white silk, with a rough cloak carelessly slung over his shoulders, with belt and fastenings untied. In the light of the lamp against which he was leaning he looked so lovely that one might have wished he were a girl; and they thought that even Uma no Kami’s ‘perfect woman,’ whom he had placed in a category of her own, would not be worthy of such a prince as Genji.”
Genji has pursued a woman and caught her between risking shame and being the chosen bedmate for Genji. He continues to pursue her and asks her brother to aid him as a go-between.
The boy was terribly sorry for Genji and did not feel sleepy at all, but he was afraid people would think his continual excursions very strange. By this time, however, everyone else in the house was sound asleep. Genji alone lay plunged in the blackest melancholy. But even while he was raging at the inhuman stubbornness of her new-found and incomprehensible resolve, he found that he could not but admire her the more for this invincible tenacity. At last he grew tired of lying awake; there was no more to be done. A moment later he had changed his mind again, and suddenly whispered to the boy ‘Take me to where she is hiding!’ ‘It is too difficult’ he said, ‘she is locked in and there are so many people there. I am afraid to go with you.’ ‘So be it’ said Genji, ‘but you at least must not abandon me’ and he laid the boy beside him on his bed. He was well content to find himself lying by this handsome young Prince’s side, and Genji, we must record, found the boy no bad substitute for his ungracious sister.
In the end, Genji will find a worthy woman, one he has taken in as a child and raised by himself.
In Japan, there is a trope which you will see not only in Japanese anime, but also in other East Asian anime, TV and films: the bishōnen (美少年). The Japanese term literally means “beautiful few years.” In Japanese, an older version would be a “biseinen” (美青年) which means “beautiful green/blue years,” or the “bidanshi” (美男子), which means “beautiful man.”
Of course, in the US, there is the trope of the Pretty Boy. TV Tropes defines that as men who:
are often slender or slight, with fine facial features (sharp cheekbones but narrow chin) and lovely hair. Facial hair is uncommon, and if present it’s a well-groomed goatee or moustache (certainly not Perma-Stubble). Being well-dressed can add to it. Prettiness is often associated with appearing youthful, sometimes factoring into Older Than They Look. If he’s on the shorter side he tends to be more scrawny, if taller then he probably has a lean athletic build.
Studies show that men have a preference for physical attractive women while women prefer men with good earning potential, but that has been brought into question. In a Psychology Today article the conclusion was:
The message seems to be that males still display a preference for physical attractiveness in a female romantic partner more than females rate the same quality in a male partner, and this finding prevails across various cultures. However, the long-known female preference for earning capacity in a male partner seems to decline in cultures of greater gender equality, where women have the potential for greater earning potential.
Yet in an internet-easy access hook-up culture of today, if men still are led by their eyes, over their intellect, the danger does come in the form of transvestite, transsexuals, drag queens and onnagata whose looks can be deceiving.
When “Kokuho” screened at AFI Fest, I wondered how it would be received during a time when the presidential administration emphasizes hypermasculinity and divisiveness. While onnagata are not drag queens, like drag queens–performers who exaggerate feminine makeup, costumes and mannerisms to create a hyperfeminine persona, onnagata represent a cultural construct of what it is to be perceived as a woman within a culture.
Kikuo isn’t gay. He engages in sexual affairs with more than one woman in the film. He is also able to aptly portray the hero of a Kabuki piece, taking the role of the lover (the orphaned clerk Tokubei) in The Love Suicides at Sonezaki. first opposite the injured Hanjiro and then opposite Hanjiro’s son, Shunsuke, who both portray the beautiful courtesan Ohatsu. In his real life, he doesn’t always know how to be the ideal man, the hero. Yet in both those instances, he is the hero as perceived by other men, Hanjiro and Shunsuke. What the film exposes and contemplates is what it means to be a man or a woman and the treachery of visual attraction. Supposedly, men are visual creatures, primarily driven by visual stimulation in their attractions and desires. In contrast, women are supposedly more focused on emotional connections, in communication and feelings. The popularity of male thirst traps on TikTok and other social media would seem to contradict that theory for women. If men are truly just visual creatures then surely they would react as the young Genji did.
Yet at a time when the US is debating the danger of drag queens and transvestites as well as transexuals, “Kokuhō” raises some disquieting questions. If men believe that love as well as lust is beyond their control because men are biologically driven by visual stimulus and “the heart wants what the heart wants,” a beautiful woman who is actually a man will disrupt such beliefs. And what a perfect woman is may be a man portraying a woman as men want women to be.
It’s disappointing but not surprising that “Kokuhō” was not among the films nominated for a Best International Feature Film Oscar, but it was nominated for a Best Makeup and Hairstyling. At the 49th Japan Academy Film Festival Prize, the film took 11 awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor (Ryo Yoshizawa) Best Screenplay, Best Music, Best Cinematography and Best Lighting Direction. At the 80th Mainichi Film Awards if won Best Director and Best Lead Performance as well as five other awards.
“Kokuhō” had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025 and was released in Japan in June 2025. It was the highest-grossing Japanese live-action film. I saw it at AFI Fest, but it took a while to organize my thoughts about it, considering what people in the US might want to know to fully understand the film. In Japanese with English subtitles.
Age of the Geek 