Oscars: How the Hair and Makeup Team Behind ‘Kokuho’ Brought Kabuki Theater’s 400-Year-Old Aesthetics to Movie Screens

Naomi Hibino says her initial response was to “go numb” upon learning that she and her fellow hair and makeup artists had been nominated for an Oscar for their work on Kokuho, Japan’s breakthrough period drama.

Hibino had spent the past 30 years working in the quiet, cloistered world of traditional Japanese dance, studying and practicing as a kaoshi, or traditional Japanese stage makeup artist. Kokuho was her very first film, and the prospect of attending the Academy Awards astonished and baffled her.

“After a while, though, as I recognized that our work really had been nominated, I still felt that it was not really for me,” Hibino says. “This recognition was for a traditional performing art form that has continued for several hundred years in my country — it was recognition for the countless people who have inherited and nurtured our art, including my sensei, who taught me everything to get here. The fact that it’s been celebrated by so many people, including people abroad, is something that I can now take great happiness in.”

Directed by Lee Sang-il, Kokuho tells the 50-year story of the complex friendship and rivalry of two kabuki theater performers — an orphaned onnagata prodigy (a male performer specializing in female roles) and the heir to a great theatrical lineage. As THR’s review noted, Lee crafts a “transporting and operatic saga that blends backstage melodrama, succession drama and a making-of-an-artist narrative into a sweeping meditation on ambition, beauty and sacrifice.”

Kokuho competed closely in the Oscars‘ best international feature film category, making the shortlist but ultimately not earning a nomination in what was an especially competitive year for world cinema. But the film’s three-person hair and makeup team — Toyokawa Kyoko, Hibino Naomi and Nishimatsu Tadashi — were surprise recipients of a nomination in the best makeup and hairstyling category.

A 15-year passion project brought to life through nearly two years of rigorous kabuki training for young stars Ryō Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama, Kokuho’s immersive kabuki stage sequences — captured in mesmerizing closeups by cinematographer Sofian El Fani (Blue Is the Warmest Color) — have been credited not only with reviving Japan’s theatrical box office but also reigniting public fascination with the centuries-old art form. After a quiet launch in the Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight section in May, Kokuho defied the odds — its runtime stretches nearly three and a half hours — and became a commercial sensation in Japan, earning $130 million and becoming the country’s top-grossing live-action film of all time. It also sparked a resurgence of public interest in kabuki theater, with major traditional theater houses across the country reporting surges in attendance, even among younger demographics.

The film has been widely hailed for the intoxicating sweep of its generational saga — but just as vital to its success in Japan was the faithful, resplendent recreation of kabuki theater’s unique aesthetics.

A 400-year-old popular theater tradition that emerged in early 17th-century Japan and evolved into a rigorously codified art form, kabuki blends acting and dance with vocal and musical performance. A collection of some 300 classic plays continue to be performed in Japan today in much the same visual grammar that audiences would have recognized dozens of generations ago — defined by exaggerated, stylized movement; an orchestral blend of shamisen, percussion and chanting; and a highly specific aesthetic of transformation, from the onnagata tradition of men performing female parts to the elaborate wigs, painted white faces and graphic lines of stage makeup that signal age, status, temperament and moral force.

Kokuho is an adaptation of an 800-page, two-volume novel by acclaimed Japanese writer Shuichi Yoshida, who spent several years embedded backstage as a kabuki stagehand to research the tradition from the inside. One of kabuki theater’s most revered contemporary masters, Nakamura Ganjirō IV, served as a key consultant, mentoring the actors during their arduous kabuki training, as well as advising the film’s craft team to ensure that stage designs, costumes, hair and makeup were accurate and respectful of tradition.

Director Lee Sang-il, previously best known for crime thrillers like Villain (2010) and directing work on Apple TV+’s Pachinko, brought in Japanese film industry veteran Kyoko Toyokawa (Sonatine, Midnight Diner) to serve as the film’s lead hair and makeup artist. Kokuho uses subtle costume and styling cues to indicate the passage of time across its 50-year sweep, and the film’s two leads, Yoshizawa (age 32) and Yokohama (29), play men both much younger and far older than themselves during different segments of the story — so Toyokawa’s task was already a daunting one. But Lee also hoped that Toyokawa — with mentorship from consulting kabuki actor and educator Kyozo Nakamura — would be able to get a strong enough handle on traditional makeup to handle the many sequences set inside the kabuki theater. Real kabuki actors apply their own makeup — one of the many facets of the art form mastered over countless years of arduous practice — but the production didn’t expect its stars to go to such lengths of method preparation.

“I was told to handle the kabuki makeup in its entirety, but kabuki makeup is something else entirely,” says Toyokawa. “I did practice, but the more I practiced, the more I came to realize that this would be insulting to kabuki actors. It is not the type of art that can be acquired overnight,” she adds.

With support from the project’s kabuki consultants, Toyokawa eventually convinced the film’s producers that they needed to hire an expert in traditional Japanese theater makeup, which led to the hiring of Hibino. Nishimatsu was brought in to handle the making of all of the traditional kabuki wigs worn by the actors — a rich and exhaustive craft tradition of its own.

For Hibino, stepping onto a film set meant adapting a centuries-old craft designed for the stage to the technical demands of cinema. In the world of traditional dance where she had spent her career, makeup is meant to endure for only a few hours and is typically viewed from a distance by audiences seated far from the stage.

“What I do day to day is apply white face paste for recitals of Japanese classical dance during stage performances,” Hibino explains. “Normally, if that makeup can be maintained for two or three hours, that is enough. But for filmmaking, the makeup has to look good for about 10 hours or so — and that was where I struggled.”

Kabuki makeup begins with a thick white base known as bintsuke, a paste derived from wood wax oils that comes in different levels of firmness. The firmer the mixture, the harder it is to apply, but the more resistant it is to sweat and other elements under hot stage or studio lights. For the film, Hibino worked with a very firm bintsuke.

More complicated still was the challenge of translating kabuki makeup — which, much like Western stage makeup, is traditionally designed to read clearly across a theater — to the unforgiving scrutiny of cinematic closeups. In preparing for the film, Hibino found herself recalling a lesson from her own training years earlier. Even in the theater, her master had emphasized that performers would inevitably study their appearance closely before stepping on stage.

“My sensei always told me that when performers get their makeup done, they always look at themselves in the mirror up close,” she says. “So even if the audience sees them from far away, the makeup must still look beautiful to the performer themselves — otherwise it can take them out of their character. I remembered that while trying to make the kabuki makeup beautiful for all of those close-ups.”

Because Kokuho spans half a century of the characters’ lives, Hibino also subtly adjusted the style and tone of the kabuki makeup to reflect the performers’ evolving maturity, social standing and emotional journeys — all while remaining faithful to the logic of makeup that would be applied by the characters themselves within the world of the story.

“When they were young, I made the makeup more youthful and vibrant — a little fresher,” she explains. “I also tried to match the personality and circumstances of the characters. Shunsuke comes from a very prestigious kabuki family, so his makeup is more vibrant and refined. Kikuo begins as an outsider, so his makeup starts simpler.”

As Kikuo rises through the kabuki ranks and ultimately achieves Japan’s rare status of Living National Treasure, Hibino gradually reshaped the look.

“By the time he becomes a living national treasure, he is a true veteran who has accumulated so much experience, on stage and in life,” she says. “So I tried to give his makeup a refined simplicity — almost a purity — where everything is just in the place where it ought to be.”

If Hibino was responsible for translating kabuki’s visual language onto the film actors’ faces, veteran craftsman Tadashi Nishimatsu faced an equally demanding task recreating the elaborate wigs that complete and enliven the iconic stage aesthetic.

Nishimatsu has spent roughly 45 years mastering the art of traditional Japanese wig making. After graduating from high school, he entered the trade as an uchi-deshi, or live-in apprentice, residing in his master’s household while training in workshops and theaters every day.

“My career spans about 45 years,” he says. “Traditional Japanese wigs involve very sophisticated craftsmanship — it is something that must be practiced day in and day out, morning to evening. Only after many years can someone participate in an actual kabuki production.”

The craft is as psychologically expressive as it is technical, Nishimatsu adds. Over centuries of kabuki tradition, wigs have come to help embody the deeper meaning of a character.

“My teacher used to tell me that the wig expresses the whole mindset of the role,” he says. “The circumstances, the social status — everything is distilled into the character through the wig. That has been true throughout the 400 years of kabuki.”

Recreating that tradition for cinema came with significant practical challenges — especially because Kokuho’s stars were not trained kabuki performers.

“The kabuki wigs used on stage are very heavy,” Nishimatsu explains. “And the cast in this film were not kabuki actors. They had to wear these wigs for very long periods of time, so the challenge was whether they could carry that weight on their heads for so many hours.”

Production days often began around 6 a.m., when makeup preparations started. Actors might then spend the entire day — and sometimes well into the night — wearing and removing the elaborate wigs dozens of times between takes.

“We personalize each wig for the actor, but because they are not accustomed to them, the fittings can sometimes be painful,” Nishimatsu says. “Unlike most Western wigs, which are made with light netting, kabuki wigs have a copper plate at the base,” he explains. “At the front there is a piece called a habutae skullcap with hair embedded in it, and there are many other separate elements assembled together. Then you add the ornamental hairpins called kanzashi, which are also quite heavy.”

In some cases, the full head ensemble can weigh over 10 pounds, placing considerable physical strain on the performers — particularly during energetic dance sequences.

For Lee, trusting his hair, makeup and costume team to get kabuki’s aesthetics exactly right freed him to focus on the drama — and on the film’s central question of what an artist is willing to sacrifice in the lifelong pursuit of beauty.

He adds: “I wanted the audience to feel like they were almost bathing in this film. I strove for it to feel that way while I was shooting — so that the audience would directly feel emotion underneath the makeup, the costumes and these ancient sagas.”