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.