If you missed this superb film at the Japanese Film Festival, now is your opportunity to experience the epic, operatic, Kabuki infused spectacle, KOKUHO, a vision splendid to be savoured on the big cinema screen.
At nearly three hours long, it is a testament to the film’s visual beauty and dramatic depth that it never fails to fascinate.
Beginning on New Year’s Day, 1964 in Nagasaki, KOKUHO has 14 year old Kikuo performing amateur Kabuki at his Yakuza dad’s New Year celebration party. In attendance is the city’s best professional Kabuki star, Hanjiro, who is impressed by the youngster’s natural ability.
The drama is not kept to the stage on this occasion as the party is gatecrashed by an opposing criminal gang and Kikuo’s father is assassinated.
After this tragic event, Hanjiro adopts him and makes him his apprentice. This makes him both companion and competitor to Hanjiro’s son, Shunsuke, who is already being tutored in the family business.
The narrative sweeps through half a century of triumph and failure, valleys and troughs, in both boys’ careers, illustrated along the way by performances of classic Kabuki.
Destruction of dynasty, the narcissism of nepotism, the salaciousness of celebrity scandal are all grist for this colossal spectacle, the grandeur never swamping the small intimacies, but certainly given centre stage.
Sumptuous in its production and costume design, KOKUHO is Japan’s official Oscars submission this year and already a national phenomenon and was selected to open the 29th Japanese Film Festival last month.
Orson Wells observed that anyone who doesn’t appreciate Kabuki must be an ignoramus. KOKUHO does nothing to dispel that observation.
