The great success of recent Japanese cinema delves into the secrets of 'kabuki'

In 17th-century Japan, kabuki theatre banished women from the stage, leading to the emergence of the onnagata, actors responsible for embodying female characters. Their white makeup and painted lips, and their graceful gestural precision have been influential beyond their borders (David Bowie acknowledged them as a reference for his stellar aura), and even today they are one of the discipline's most prized elements. This is how Kokuho is presented, a melodrama that firmly expands from the sixties to 2014, and which is guided by the tumultuous relationship between two onnagata who are raised as brothers. One, Kikuo, son of a yakuza murdered by his rivals; the other, Shunsuke, the firstborn son of Hanjiro, a celebrated kabuki actor. When the latter decides to name Kikuo as his successor to the detriment of his own son, scandal and jealousy irremediably erode the bond between the protagonists.

To Western eyes, the magnetism of Kokuho may lie in the exoticism of the stage tradition, and in the dissonance of conceiving transvestism within an eminently heterosexual narrative framework. In its country of origin, where it was the most undeniable success of last season, the film's impact is deeper, as it involves verifying how one of Japan's cultural treasures is viewed by Lee Sang-il, a Korean-Japanese filmmaker (a mestizaje often disdained) who knows perfectly well what it means to exist under a dual identity.