"Kokuho" is a 800-page novel and a 175-minute movie. It's fun to compare the two, making this the most talked-about film of the year.

Born into a family of yakuza, Kikuo (Yoshizawa Ryo) is discovered by Hanai Hanjiro (Watanabe Ken), the head of a prestigious Kamigata Kabuki family, for his exceptional beauty and kabuki talent, and ends up living with Hanjiro as a guest. There, Kikuo meets Hanjiro's biological son, Shunsuke (Yokohama Ryusei). Kikuo enters the world of kabuki from another world, while Shunsuke is born with a promising future. The two rivals push each other to improve, dedicating their youth to the art. However, an unimaginable and ironic fate awaits them.

Index

• The theme that connects Shuichi Yoshida and Lee Sang-il
• A number of popular performances are included
• Subtle differences from the original
• Casting was based on Yoshizawa Ryo
• Are the actors based on real people?
• What lies ahead for Kikuo and Shunsuke

The theme that connects Shuichi Yoshida and Lee Sang-il

Author Shuichi Yoshida, who wasn't particularly familiar with kabuki, came up with the idea for " Kokuho " around 2014 while watching kabuki performances at the theater and on DVD. Later, through a mutual connection, Yoshida was introduced to Nakamura Ganjiro IV, who arranged for him to make him a kuroko (black robe). Yoshida began following Ganjiro around, visiting not only the Tokyo Kabukiza but also the Hakataza, Shochikuza, and Kyoto Kabuki Renjo. This continued from before the serialization began in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in 2017 through to the time it was published, as he translated all sorts of knowledge, details, and realism surrounding kabuki into words. Novelist Jiro Asada enthusiastically commented on the feeling he had after reading it: "When I finished reading it, I didn't feel like I'd finished a novel, but rather like I'd seen the entire play from the opening act to the final act." As a result, the novel " Kokuho " won both the 69th Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize and the 14th Chuokoron Literary Prize in 2019.

"Kokuho" © Yoshida Shuichi / Asahi Shimbun Publications © 2025 "Kokuho" Film Production Committee

Around that time, director Lee Sang-il was thinking about making a film about female Kabuki actors. He and Yoshida had previously collaborated on " Villain " (2010) and " Rage " (2016), and so they were close allies, so to speak. It seems that Lee first became interested in female Kabuki actors about 15 years ago, which means that he started chronologically earlier than Yoshida. The reason for the initial difficulties in adapting the story into a film was that the knowledge required to create a story based on a real actor was simply too great a hurdle. This bitter experience made Lee cautious about adapting the story into a film.