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A strong selection of Japanese films at TIFF and VIFF this fall. Clockwise: Saikai Paradise, ©KEIKO TSURUOKA. Renoir, ©Renoir Loaded Films. Kohuko, ©Shuichi Yoshida/ASP ©2025 “KOHUKO” Film Partners.

This has been a strong year for Japanese cinema, and Canadian audiences have much to enjoy as many of Japan’s finest find their way to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September and the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) in October. Here are some standouts.

©Shuichi Yoshida/ASP ©2025 “KOHUKO” Film Partners

KOKUHO (TIFF and VIFF)

Kokuho has become an unexpected phenomenon at the Japanese box office, now standing as the second-highest-grossing live-action film in the country’s history, and has been chosen as Japan’s official Oscars submission for the Best International Feature Film. Such accolades seem unlikely for a three-hour drama centred on the esoteric world of Kabuki, but Kokuho carries an exceptional pedigree.

The film is a long-gestating passion project for director Lee Sang-il (Unforgiven, Wandering, Hula Girls), born of his 15-year fascination with Kabuki and the onnagata tradition (male actors specializing in female roles). It is also Lee’s third adaptation of a Shūichi Yoshida novel (Villain and Rage), further cementing a collaboration defined by brooding narratives and finely honed human drama. Tickets were hard to come by at TIFF and will surely be just as scarce in Vancouver.

The film opens in 1960s Nagasaki, where the celebrated Kabuki master Hanjiro Hanai (Ken Watanabe) attends a lavish party hosted by a local Yakuza. The evening’s entertainment is a gifted young Kabuki performer named Kikuo. Hanjiro is instantly captivated and is told by the Yakuza host that the boy is his son. The celebration turns to chaos when a rival gang storms the party, leaving the Yakuza boss dead. In the aftermath, Hanjiro whisks Kikuo away from the carnage, bringing him into his own household, where his son and heir, Shunsuke, is training in the Kabuki tradition. The two boys forge an intense friendship, supporting each other through the grueling demands of their training. Yet, even in their devotion to one another, rivalry and buried resentments begin to surface.

©Shuichi Yoshida/ASP ©2025 “KOHUKO” Film Partners

The film then leaps to 1972, when Kikuo (Ryo Yoshizawa) and Shunsuke (Ryusei Yokohama) create a sensation performing together as onnagata in the Kabuki dance Two Wisteria Maidens. Yet, it is Kikuo whose skill and passion for Kabuki shines brightest. Their bond is further tested when the mercurial Hanjiro selects Kikuo to star solo in the classic The Love Suicides at Sonezaki. Once again, Kikuo triumphs with the audience, and Shunsuke, stung by disappointment and a sense of paternal betrayal, leaves the troupe.

Kokuho continues to track the interwoven lives of the two protagonists through the ensuing decades, with Kikuo’s star in the ascent while Shunsuke’s career teeters on collapse. They remain both brothers and rivals. Kikuo resents Shunsuke’s family lineage and privilege, while Kikuo’s ambition and superior gifts as a performer indirectly drive Shunsuke’s decline.

Both performances are rendered with consummate skill. Ryusei Yokohama makes Shunsuke an affable presence, yet one undermined by his own casual entitlement and the spectre of a far hungrier rival. Ryo Yoshizawa’s Kikuo, with his fathomless, unreadable eyes, can be ruthless and manipulative, yet never entirely loses our sympathy. Kabuki is exposed as a merciless artistic arena, and Kikuo’s conundrum lies in reconciling loyalty to a friend with the pursuit of a transformative artistic vision and the attainment of Ningen Kokuho status, a living national treasure.

Lee’s film is a breathtaking epic, expansive in scope and intimate in its delicate attention to detail. With lush cinematography and a well-paced script by Satoko Okudera, it ensnares the audience completely, holding them spellbound across three hours. In its huge, swooning climax, Kikuo embodies the ghostly, tragic Heron Maiden, delivering a performance that is at once heartbreaking, otherworldly, and utterly unforgettable. See it and make sure it is on the largest screen possible. A masterpiece.

©Renoir Loaded Films

RENOIR (TIFF and VIFF)

Chie Hayakawa’s 2022 debut feature, Plan 75, turned an unblinking eye on death from a societal and political, as well as personal perspective. Low fertility rates and exclusive immigration policies have made Japan the oldest country in the world. In response to the economic pressure this exerts, the government has introduced Plan 75, a program that encourages seniors to self-euthanize after their 75th birthday. The result was as deeply humanistic as it was chilling.

Hayakawa returns with Renoir, again addressing mortality but in a far more elliptical manner. Both narratives are driven by Hayakawa’s loss of her father to cancer at an early age, but Renoir is told from a much more subjective and personal place. Set in the late 1980s, when the director was the same age as her protagonist, Hayakawa’s narrative unfolds through the eyes of 11-year-old Fuki (Yui Suzuki).

The film also deals with themes of disconnection and the weakening of bonds within families and societies. Her father, Keiji (Lily Franky), is lost in his own thoughts as a terminal disease approaches its endpoint, while her mother (Hikari Ishida) is bending under the constant stress of caring for Keiji, while holding down a full-time job. Many of the film’s episodes find Yuki straining to find connection as her life becomes increasingly unmoored. She does this through language (developing a close bond with her English teacher), experiments with telepathy and hypnotism, and telephonically, leading to a chilling encounter in which she is lured to the home of a pedophile through a “phone club.”

Renoir’s approach may confound some admirers of Plan 75, who seek the assurance of a reliable narrator or a more structured narrative, yet the film pays substantial rewards beyond such conventions. Hayakawa and her team offer a literate script that uncovers moments of joy and humanity along the character’s painful trajectory, complemented throughout by perceptive cinematography and masterful sound design.

Ultimately, it is Suzuki’s magnetic central performance, marked by a nuanced embodiment of curiosity, vulnerability, and youthful disorientation, that is the film’s primary anchor. This sense of disorientation may extend to the audience, yet in the end, the film, much like the Impressionist master evoked in its title, paints a compelling portrait of an uncanny young girl through disparate strokes, each of which resists easy interpretation in isolation.

©KEIKO TSURUOKA

SAIKAI PARADISE (VIFF)

Saikai city is located in Nagasaki Prefecture, a once-vital area and home to profound historical incident. It was one of the earliest gateways of foreign trade and the introduction of Christianity to Japan. Keiko Tsuruoka (The Town of Whales, Tsugaru Lacquer Girl), serving quadruple duty as writer, director, cinematographer, and editor, sets her film in the present semi-deserted edges of the region. Still breathtaking, Saikai has been, like much of rural Japan, hollowed out by the steady migration of young people to the cities.

Into this space returns Kazu (Kazunari Yanagitani), an actor from Tokyo, burdened by a troubling secret. Welcomed with open arms by his family and embraced once more by the community he left behind, he finds himself caught between their hopes and the truth he must finally unveil: the impending collapse of his marriage.

The “paradise” of the title is a crumbling amusement park from Kazu’s childhood, its silence thick in the sweltering seaside heat. Wandering through its desolate stillness, the discovery of hundreds of weathered Buddhist idols feels like a revelation. It is a moment both haunting and tender, capturing the film’s quiet, lingering sense of memory and loss.

The film manages a languid, unforced tone, and Tsuruoka and her actors demonstrate finesse in capturing moments of genuine poignancy. At its centre, Kazu emerges as a compelling figure, his placid exterior concealing a turbulent interior life that renders his struggles both relatable and affecting. With the wistful Saikai Paradise, Tsuruoka delivers an understated, graceful, and finely observed work, attuned to the quiet moments and subtle textures of life.

©KEIKO TSURUOKA