HIROSHIMA — The Japanese film Kokuho has become the highest-grossing live-action film ever released in Japan. The film, whose title translates as "national treasure," runs for almost three hours and spans five decades in its depiction of the world of kabuki.

The film follows the career of Kikuo, the orphaned son of a Hiroshima gangster, who first enters the world of kabuki in the late 1940s. Ryo Yoshizawa plays the adult Kikuo, who trains as an onnagata, a male actor who specializes in female roles, under the guidance of the Osaka actor Hanjiro, played by Ken Watanabe. Kikuo wins and later loses the friendship of Hanjiro's son Shunsuke, played by Ryusei Yokohama, and ascends to the rank of living national treasure in the 1980s.

In Japanese, ningen kokuho means "living national treasures," referring to people recognized by the state as embodying a traditional art or craft. Such figures include potters, dyers, swordsmiths and lacquerware makers. There are currently six kabuki actors recognized as living national treasures in Japan.

Kabuki has existed as commercial theater for over 400 years and has been restricted to male actors since the early 1600s. Kabuki actors pass down their hereditary stage names to their sons, are trained by their families and typically appear on stage from five or six years of age, moving from minor roles to starring roles over time. Traditional kabuki actors undergo approximately 25 years of training before performing major roles. Yoshizawa underwent 18 months of kabuki training before filming began.

Tunisian cinematographer Sofian El Fani, whose previous films include Blue is the Warmest Color and Timbuktu, shot the film's onstage scenes. Those scenes feature dance pieces drawn from kabuki's historical repertoire, including a love suicide play, and depict costume and set design such as hikinuki costume changes, in which an outer kimono is cut away to reveal a contrasting garment beneath. The final dance sequence features the spirit of a heron embodied first as a young woman and later as an older woman dancing at night with falling theatrical paper snow.

Scenes show teenage Kikuo and Shunsuke practicing dance sequences stripped to the waist in a summer practice room until their tutor is satisfied. In one scene, Kikuo begs Shunsuke for a cup of his blood to drink before playing a starring female role for the first time. The film does not address questions of sexual or gender identity for its onnagata character. The older onnagata Mangiku, played by butoh dancer Min Tanaka, references the phrase that writer Yukio Mishima attributed to Utaemon Nakamura VI, who was considered the greatest onnagata of the mid 20th century.