Kokuhō Returns to Japanese Cinemas for One Week, a Year After Becoming a Phenomenon
The film nobody bet on, three hours about kabuki, became the second highest-grossing Japanese live-action movie in history. This week it takes a farewell run in theatres before moving to streaming, already touring the world chasing an Oscar.
Kokuhō (国宝, “national treasure”) returned to Japanese cinemas this Friday, June 6, 2026, for a one-week nationwide re-run. According to the film’s official account, the farewell run lasts through June 11, marking almost exactly one year since the premiere on June 6, 2025. The same day it came back to the big screen, it also landed on Prime Video, available for digital purchase since May 20 and in the subscription catalogue from June 6.
The return is not just another re-release. It is the closing note of one of the biggest commercial surprises in recent Japanese cinema.
The Number Nobody Predicted
Directed by Lee Sang-il (of Rage and the second season of Pachinko) and based on Shuichi Yoshida’s novel, Kokuhō follows five decades in the lives of two kabuki actors: an orphan from outside the world, and the heir of a traditional stage family, whose friendship sours into obsession and rivalry. The cast brings together Ryo Yoshizawa, Ryusei Yokohama and Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe.
Three hours long. A subject considered niche. Market analysts forecast small turnout. Audiences proved the opposite. The film opened on June 6, 2025 with a modest debut weekend, around 346 million yen, and did what almost no film does: it grew every following week for more than a month, on word of mouth.
On November 25, 2025, Kokuhō passed Bayside Shakedown 2 (2003) to become the highest-grossing Japanese live-action film of all time in the domestic market, breaking a record that had stood for 22 years. By March 2026, according to the Japanese Wikipedia citing box-office data, the film had cleared 20.3 billion yen (about 127 million dollars) and over 12 million tickets sold. That places it, among all films ever shown in Japan, behind only Titanic in gross for a live-action title, and eighth on the all-time chart overall, tied with One Piece Film Red.
For an art-house drama about a centuries-old theatrical tradition, it is a result the industry itself cannot quite explain. The reading most repeated by the Japanese press is simple: after years of box office dominated by animation and franchise, part of the adult audience came back to the cinema for something that demanded their full attention.
The Kabuki-za in Ginza. The kabuki the film dramatises still fills real theatres. Shochiku even promoted screenings of the film inside the Kabuki-za itself. Photo: Marcinwiacek / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons
Kokuhō was chosen in April 2025 as Japan’s official submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature at the 2026 ceremony, and it made the category’s shortlist. That race is what has been driving the releases outside Japan.
In North America, the rights went to GKIDS (the same distributor that releases Studio Ghibli films in the United States). It started with Oscar-qualifying screenings in Los Angeles and New York in November 2025, with Lee Sang-il and Yoshizawa present for Q&As. The limited commercial opening came on February 6, 2026, in New York, Los Angeles and key Canadian markets, with a wider expansion from February 20.
The film also travelled the international festival circuit through 2025, including the Toronto festival, where GKIDS announced the acquisition. International sales were handled by France’s Pyramide International, which opens the way for European releases through 2026. As of this writing, there is no confirmed commercial release date in Brazil.
For anyone in Japan, this is the last week to see the three acts of Kokuhō on a big screen before it becomes, for good, a streaming catalogue title. For anyone outside, the release calendar is still being drawn, festival by festival, market by market, on the momentum of an Oscar campaign nobody imagined when the film opened with 346 million yen and a reputation for being long.
Hidden Anime has published an exclusive in-depth feature on the film. Our Nippon Lens Special goes beyond the box-office numbers to unpack what Kokuhō gets right about real kabuki: the onnagata tradition, the four-century rule of hereditary bloodlines, why the hero comes from the yakuza, and the fact that the film about an outsider breaking into kabuki was itself directed by an outsider, the zainichi Korean filmmaker Lee Sang-il.
Read: Kokuhō: the film about an outsider breaking into kabuki was made by an outsider