Kokuho is a colourful, lengthy epic, spanning five decades and running almost three hours, set in the world of kabuki – Japan’s most popular traditional performing art. It has been a huge hit in Japan, becoming the country’s highest ever grossing live-action film.

The film’s title translates as “national treasure”. But it does not refer to tangible treasures like Buddhist temples, tea bowls, or imperial calligraphy. Instead, it refers to ningen kokuho – “living national treasures”. It’s the popular term for people recognised by the Japanese state as embodying a traditional art or craft.

Honourees run the gamut from potters, dyers and swordsmiths to lacquerware makers. But it is the kokuho from the traditional theatrical genres, especially kabuki, that most strongly capture the public’s imagination. Only a handful of kabuki actors in each generation ever make it to this rarefied height of official recognition. In Japan today there are just six of them.

The film traces the career of Kikuo (played as an adult by Ryo Yoshizawa), the orphaned son of a Hiroshima gangster. We follow Kikuo as he first enters the world of kabuki in the late 1940s, trains as an onnagata (a male actor who specialises in female roles) under the uncompromising guidance of a famous Osaka actor Hanjiro (Ken Watanabe), wins then loses the friendship of Hanjiro’s son Shunsuke (Ryusei Yokohama) and finally ascends........

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