In White, in Venice: The Two Days SHUMEI Met a Global Audience

The Red Carpet, in Full Costume

Danjūrō stepped onto the red carpet still in kabuki costume — reported as the first time anyone has walked it in full kabuki dress. Rather than changing into a tuxedo and joining the line as 'an actor from Japan', he entered it as what he is on stage. That, more than the screening itself, may have been the largest thing to happen that day.

He appeared at the photocall in the same white costume, wig and make-up, against the official festival panel with its repeating winged lions. Beside him stood Ichikawa Shinnosuke in formal black montsuki and striped hakama, and director Takashi Miike. Another frame catches the moment just before, as the costume is adjusted for him. Stage costume cannot be put on alone — and that fact carried on, unchanged, in front of the festival's wall.

On the Screen Outside

A large screen had been erected outside the Palazzo del Casinò, and Danjūrō's costumed figure filled it. The broadcaster RAI's logo sits at the upper left; the festival's own marks run down the right. A white-painted face, on a screen that belongs neither to the Kabukiza's frontage nor to any Japanese broadcast.

Of all the photographs from that day, this is probably the one that says the most. On this site it appears cropped: the original frame showed members of the public walking past in identifiable detail, so only the screen and the venue's signage have been kept.

Carrying 'Shumei' Untranslated (An Editorial View)

What follows is our own reading. The film's international title is SHUMEI — not Succession, not Inheritance. The act of taking on a name was carried abroad as a sound, rather than swapped for the nearest English word. As with ZEN or IKIGAI, choosing not to translate is a wager: that the meaning will survive better whole than approximated.

Standing at the photocall still in costume seems to fall on the same line. The assumption that stage dress comes off once the stage is over was simply set aside. Show it first; explain afterwards. That, one could argue, is what kabuki has been doing for four hundred years.

What these two days will amount to is not yet clear. The question is not prizes or reviews, but what stayed with the people who saw that white-painted face in Venice. Only time can answer it.

In Japanese Cinemas from 25 September

SHUMEI opens in Japan on 25 September 2026. A film that met its international audience first, in Venice, now comes home. Please check the official announcements for cinemas and times.