Tokyo Sonata (2008) User Reviews

Credit crunched

[GyatsoLa · 7/10 · 10 February 2009]

Economic ruin seems to be all the rage these days - since the Japanese have gone through it all in the 90's they have a bit of a head start over addressing it artistically. This is Kurosawa's take on the humiliation job loss delivers to the Japanese male, and the ennui of modern middle class Japanese life.

Someone once wrote that every Japanese film maker eventually does his 'Ozu' movie, and for the first hour this seems to be Kurosawa's. It starts out as a beautifully observed family drama, when a very ordinary Japanese family goes about their business, unaware that the father Ryuhei has been made redundant - his company realises they can cut costs by shipping out all admin to Dalian in China. In very Japanese fashion, he pretends nothing has happened, going to 'work' all day, which consists of sitting around waiting for food handouts, then coming home pretending everything is normal. In the meanwhile his oldest son fails to find a meaningful job and his youngest is struggling at school. His wife Megumi (a very fine performance by Kyoko Koizumi) keeps the family ticking over.

It seems to be well on its way to a quiet drama about a family coping under strain, but then the Ozu gives way to a bit of Haruki Murakami style magical realism - all sorts of unlikely events and coincidences take place, forcing everyone to confront their failures. This includes a frankly bizarre subplot featuring Iraq and what seems a pointless one about a kidnapping. It all ties together with an ending that thankfully falls just short of too much sentimentality.

It is an intriguing film, and one that does at least attempt to tackle real issues and themes in family life. Unfortunately, I think it is ultimately something of a failure - too often it meanders away in a manner that made me suspect the film maker just didn't know where the narrative was going. I think in making this Kurosawa watched a lot of Ozu - its a pity he didn't listen to Ozu's advice that too much plot means you are manipulating your characters, and if you are manipulating them, you are not respecting them. I would consider this film to be an honorable failure, but still a failure on its own ambitious terms.

A hard look at Japan

[siderite · 8/10 · 13 September 2009]

For a foreigner like me, Japan is a mystery, both wonderful, weird and hard to understand, especially since most of my information about the country is anecdotal or (worse?) coming from mangas. I've met people having the greatest respect for Japanese customs and people who completely badmouth the country.

From this perspective, Tokyo Sonata is a bit of a gem, showing me how ordinary Japanese people live and think. There is the family, standard issue of father, mother and two children, and there are the roles: head of the family, respectful housewife, rebellious teenager and confused child. What do they do when the economic crisis and the traditional value system clash?

I thought the actors were good, the soundtrack as well (to be expected given the title), and the plot was slow but crisp. There must have been a lot of expectations on a guy directing movies when his last name is Kurosawa and not related to Akira, because the movie was overall an excellent film. However, given its two hour length and slow pace, I advice you look at it when in the mood for cinematography, not some easy entertainment. Also, it is a pretty sad drama in places, so be ready to empathize with some hard hit people.

A Remarkable Expose of Domestic Dysfunction

[MCDRLx · 8/10 · 18 June 2009]

Parting the veil on a Japanese household teetering on the verge of collapse, "Tokyo Sonata" may be director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's most conventional work-if conventional is the right word for a film that explores the contemporary family dynamic with such brooding fortitude. The renowned Japanese horror filmmaker has created a startlingly candid portrait of domestic life in "Tokyo Sonata," a film that, by evoking the waking nightmares of repressed souls, brims with a terror of its own accord.

Businessman Ryuhei Sasaki, victimized by economic downsizing after his company terminates his job, chooses to hide his predicament from his family by roaming the streets of Tokyo during daytime. His wife Megumi juggles housewife duties and a tenuous relationship with her oldest son Takashi, whose desire to break away from tradition echoes the detachment of Japanese youth in a society wreathed in materialism. The youngest member of the family, Kenji, rebels against authority yet displays sensitivity beyond his age when he discovers an innate passion for piano.

Juxtaposing tight interior shots of living rooms with panoramic compositions of urban sprawl, Kurosawa imbues the film with something of an otherworldly presence-a haunting, dreamlike aura that pervades "Tokyo Sonata" as its dysfunctional family continues to crumble inwardly. Conversations dissipate; lies build on previous lies; a mother's love is torn between duty and empathy. Humiliated by his jobless situation yet determined to maintain his patriarchal status, Ryuhei physically abuses Kenji for secretly taking piano lessons after browbeating Megumi for allowing Takashi to join the military. Recession-plagued Tokyo, already a landscape of existential lament, gradually takes a backseat to familial destruction.

The film's blend of domestic drama and social commentary is both poignant and timely. Office workers like Ryuhei and his colleagues are portrayed as ironic victims of the Japanese male dynamic, driven by their obligations to home and work yet completely unwilling to compromise after hitting rock bottom. In displaying the failure of authority in a culture that revolves around it, Kurosawa draws poignant contrasts. "We're like a slowly sinking ship," grieves an unemployed friend of Ryuhei. "The lifeboats are gone, the water's up to our mouths." Like a vessel slowly sliding into oblivion, ideals built around workplaces and households slowly disintegrate, replaced by coldness and bitter angst.

Tellingly, "Tokyo Sonata" eventually mirrors these systematic collapses by venturing into surreal territory. In one of the film's most affecting sequences, an afternoon nap turns into a chilling seance when Takashi returns home from the war, saying to his mother, "I killed so many people." Megumi's troubled psyche finally begins to eat away at her maternal strength. When a wayward burglar abducts her, and Ryuhei and Kenji encounter catastrophic situations, the film's quiet buildup escalates into irreversible mayhem.

When does it end, and where does it begin? The mother's catharsis, manifested in a sequence of lasting power, injects rays of hope into an otherwise miserable flurry of dead ends. The final movement of "Tokyo Sonata," uneven as it is compared to its predecessors, completes the cycle of fall and salvation with admirable finality. Powerfully acted and impeccably orchestrated, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Tokyo Sonata" is a masterful exercise in paradoxes: at one and the same time comical and melancholy, despairing and exultant, nihilistic and regenerative.

I highly recommend this film.

[khemass · 10/10 · 16 April 2009]

At first I thought this film would be a depressing story to watch, but I was surprised that the film was actually very uplifting. Although it's a sad story overall, it has a very powerful message if you watch it to the end, a message that will encourage you to move on even when life gets to its darkest moment.

This story is about problems of people in Tokyo, all sorts of problems. The leader of the family lose their job and was afraid to tell his family, the elder son join American army and go to war, the younger son wants to learn the piano but the father forbids him, the wife is depressed of trying to hold the family together. The film is so delicate and beautiful. It captures the feeling of each character and the whole depressive atmosphere of Tokyo very well. The pace is slow but it's not boring because you can follow the story very easily and you can sympathize with each one of the characters. It doesn't even have any Hollywood boring formula of sentimental film. This is a real work of art.

I'm not gonna spoil this movie. I just want to tell you to go watch this film and watch it to the end although you feel that it's getting darker and darker. For me, this is not another good movie. This is a "great" movie because after I watch it, I feel that now I can go on with my life.

Welcome to the Depressing World of Redundancy

[thethbullet · 1 August 2011]

The film tells the story of Ryūhei who is laid off at the start of the movie, due to his company's employment of cheap labour from China. Afraid to tell his wife and family, in fear that he will no longer have the authority and respect that he deserves, he pretends he still has a job and goes to work every day as usual. The film deals with the fear of losing everything one has in life. It deals with themes of dishonesty, pride, anger, fear, anxiety, rejection, suicide, rebellion, starting over, lust and in my personal view, the human need to depend on a system of laws and norms.

In its early stages, the film often tries to depict redundancy in funny moments. I loved the character of Kurosu, who tries to hang on to what he has left by looking busy and setting his mobile phone alarm to ring to show people how busy he is. It reminds me of what I did in the early stages of my redundancy and how it gave me a massive sense of wellbeing. He even invites Ryūhei to dinner, by asking him to act like a colleague at work and discussing a fake business meeting at the dinner table, while his wife and daughter are there. At this dinner, we learn that all is not what it seems and Kurosu's wife knows that something is not right. There is an uncomfortable silence in this scene, which suggests to the viewer that the good manners and politeness that the scene encompasses are only acting as a veil to prevent us from seeing what redundancy has done to this family. It is not long before the film takes a darker, more depressing turn as Kuruso and his wife, commit suicide. In reality it is very sad and true that some people will not survive job loss and will be so ashamed of their position, that they will eventually take their own lives. I think the director is very right to place emphasis on this, as many films that have been made about redundancy in the past, have failed to do so.

Based on my experiences, the film accurately portrays the emotions a person will go through after loss of a job. If I have one criticism of the film it is that it fails to addresses the issue of materialism and spiritual emptiness that many modern day white collar, office jobs encompass. There is an old saying, which I am sure many of the readers are familiar with, which says "the bigger you are the harder you fall". We are all part of a hierarchal society, a 'dog eat dog' world, where we want to go higher up as fast as we possibly can. We want to live under the veil of a middle class, bourgeoisie lifestyle, wear the best suits, have the best hairstyles, drive the best cars, eat the best food and live in the biggest houses. The cost of this though is that there is no guarantee that the profession that you have chosen, despite the fact that you have dedicated your life to it, with love you back but rather will resent you and leave you with nothing. I think that one of the main reasons why Ryūhei struggles with unemployment is his lack of spiritualism and dependence on such a hierarchical role for so long, until he has been made redundant. He is unable to find work, because his skills as a Administrative Director are no longer required. Therefore when he is made redundant, we really get to see how insecure the guy really is, not just in his work life but also his family life. He is the sole money provider in the house but is very rarely there for his wife and kids. He wants to maintain authority in the house and is afraid to lose power, whether it is to his elder son, who despite his parents requests, joins the US military or the younger son, who wants to learn how to play the piano. In most of the film, the character shows very little attention to his wife and kids and is only seen eating with them in moments of uncomfortable silence. In one moment after returning to work, he even ignores his wife's request to take her to bed, despite her being the only person who is actually holding the family together. The film takes a much darker turn near to its closing stages, with the stories of the wife, husband and younger son being looked into more deeply. We learn that they are all want to 'start over' again by somehow erasing their lives, in the wife's case (who becomes ashamed after finding out her husband is working as a janitor) wishing that her life was a dream despite originally and despite giving perception of caring angelic mother, we learn even she is capable of prejudice against her own loved ones. Without giving too much of the ending away, I will say that the family does eventually come to terms with the changes that it has gone through and things do get better over time.

I liked Tokyo Sonata, because it is one of those rare films that deals with a serious issue that very few people will truly sympathise with, unless they have experienced the situation for themselves. It is a wakeup call collar professionals and people in power, because is sheds light on how meaningless their lives are likely to be when the veil of 'normality' is lifted from their lives.

Brilliant and disturbing

[howard.schumann · 9/10 · 19 November 2010]

In Japan, the unemployment rate reached an historic high of 5.60 in July 2009. Today, over 30% of the work force is still compelled to take casual labor, with more than 5,000 casual workers living in internet cafés because they cannot pay their rent. Statistics, however, do not tell the human story of unemployment. Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, known for horror movies such as Cure and Pulse, has dramatized the social and psychological effects of Japan's economic woes in Tokyo Sonata, winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Shot in the outskirts of Tokyo and backed by the haunting score of Kazumasa Hashimoto, Tokyo Sonata is a brilliant and disturbing film that grips us through outstanding performances and an unsettling social message.

Tokyo Sonata follows Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa), a 46-year-old administrator in a Tokyo health care equipment company who loses his job after his department is outsourced to China. Like Vincent in Cantet's 2001 film Time Out, being suddenly without a job is damaging to Ryuhei's pride and he withholds the information from his wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) and their two boys, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) and 12-year-old Kenji (Kai Inowaki). Struggling to save face and maintain his moral authority, Ryuhei leaves home each morning dressed in a business suit and tie, spending his day standing in long lines looking for work and joining homeless men and other unemployed seeking food at a soup kitchen.

Ryuhei's wife Megumi goes about her routine household chores without complaining and never questions her husband, even when he comes home each night looking increasingly despondent. It is obvious that the layoff has simply crystallized the underlying discontent in the Sasaki family and Kurosawa shows the family eating dinner together in a sterile environment with little or no communication. In an incident at school in Kenji's sixth grade class, Kurosawa also shows how the loss of moral authority can lead to sudden disintegration. After Kenji is admonished by the teacher for passing on another student's manga, the boy insensitively tells the entire class that he witnessed his teacher on the train reading porn, causing chaos in the classroom.

Ryuhei soon discovers that he is not alone. While eating in the park, he meets an old school friend, Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda), who is also unemployed and also has not told his wife. "The lifeboats are gone", he tells Ryuhei, "The water's up to our mouths." Kurosu is engaged in even a bigger deception, programming his cell phone to ring every five minutes to give the impression that he is receiving work-related calls. He later invites Ryuhei to his house for dinner so that he can introduce him to his wife as a co-worker. Ryuhei is interviewed for jobs but none of them are the type of work he is looking for. One prospective employer asks him what he can do and he impulsively answers that he can sing karaoke.

As the charade of pretending to go to work continues, Ryuhei takes his anger and frustration out on Kenji who has become fixated on taking piano lessons. When he learns that the boy has been spending his lunch money on piano lessons, Kenji is beaten and thrown down the stairs, requiring a trip to the hospital. The older son, Takashi, is also severely chastised and asked to leave the house when he tells his parents that he intends to join the U.S. military to fight in the Middle East. From this point, events seem to spiral out of control and, in a jarring twist that takes the film in a different direction, Megumi is held hostage by Dorobo, a home-invading robber (Koji Yakusho).

The burglar is almost a comic character who, while being driven around town by Megumi with a knife thrust in her face, admits that he's been a failure at everything he has done, even robbery. The frightening drive ends in a shack by the pitch-black sea where a suddenly contrite Dorobo asks Megumi if she is a goddess. It is here that she discovers what is available to her in life if she is freed from illusions and wonders aloud how she can start over. "Wouldn't it be wonderful", she asks, "if my whole life was a dream so far and suddenly I awaken?" When more disturbing things happen to the family, things seem as if they could not possibly get any worse. Yet in a coda of renewal, the calming music of Debussy tells us that if we open our heart to its enchanting melody, we can awaken to the serenity of knowing who we really are.

Enjoy with a Japanese family common problems

[romeocine · 7/10 · 22 February 2009]

After Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film Sakebi (2006), a horror one, comes out his last film Tokyo Sonata in which funny, dramatic, passionate and frustrated attitudes seem to be each one of the characters of the four personages in this film (the husband, the mother, the youngest son and the oldest son respectively) which catches spectator interest through the life of this Japanese middle-class traditional family. With a simply story depicted in Tokyo city and structured with events which show social-economic issues of ordinary people who try to manage without the century present problems, there is no lost for watching Tokyo Sonata. Also, enjoyable the breath of Japanese culture representation.

Compelling Japanese Family Drama

[freemantle_uk · 8/10 · 18 March 2010]

Tokyo Sonata tells the story of a changing Japanese economy, social culture and employment culture and it effects on family. Here it is excellently told by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (surprisingly no relation to the great Akira Kurosawa).

Ryûhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) is a 46-year-old career man living in an industrial area of Tokyo with his family. Early on he looses his job when his department is out sourced to China, and he tries to hire the fact from his wife and children. Ryûhei tries to act normal whilst he spends his day at an employment agency, and waiting in the park with other unemployed people for free food. He meets a former schoolfriend, Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda), who also lost his job and hides the fact from his family. Kurosu gives Ryûhei tips on how to keep the charade, but the stress becomes too great on both men. Ryûhei slowly becomes more bitter and authoritarian at home. Ryûhei's family also suffer their own problems. His youngest son Kenji (Inowaki Kai) has problems in school, coming into conflict with one of his teachers, but he discovers his love and talent for the piano. He secretly takes lessons and his teacher wants him to audition for a music school, but this goes again his father's wishes in a Billy Elliot type sub-plot. Ryûhei older son Takashi (Yû Koyanagi) is more distance from his father, do small jobs, but he plans joining the American military. But again, Ryûhei forbids it, despite Takashi being old enough to make his own decision.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa tells a low-key, but compelling story. He often uses wide shot, giving the audience the feeling like a bystander in these people's lives. Using wide shot forces allows the actors to put real power in their performances with long continuous shots and does not allow the audience to get distracted by continuous editing. Kurosawa is able keep the film going with a fast pace and compelling despite it's low key subject matter. Kurosawa also casted some superb actors who are all wondering in their performances in this film. This is also a film telling some interesting aspects of Japanese culture. The Japanese economy is changing: the notion that someone could have a job for life is disappearing, and that the Japanese economy is suffering the same issues as Anglo-Saxon style economies. The film also acts as a commentary about the Japanese family, where it is portrayed in an old-fashion way, the man runs the house and controls the money, but this system is changing, with the whole family rebelling, and with other Japanese people having a more enlightened view. The third theme is also shown through Takashi about a changing view of America in Japan. The Japanese have in the past had a hostile view to the American military presence in Japan, with incidents like the 1995 Okinawan rape incident, but a younger generation haven't had to suffer this, and the Japanese view of military action is also changing. This film will give you a lot to think about.

Despite these good plots this film is far from perfect. By the end of the second and the beginning of the third act the plot starts to fall apart with some unrealistic events, which ruins the film overall. However Tokyo Sonata is a worthy film, showing that Japanese cinema is one of the best in the world. It also shows that Japanese cinema is more then just anime and violence manga adaptions like Battle Royale, which is also very very good.

Resonates simplicity

[shariqq · 7/10 · 20 December 2008]

Tokyo Sonata resonates such simplicity in its telling that it's difficult to not like the movie. But in doing so, it also becomes victim of over-simplifying many of the issues its main characters face. The story is of a family of four: The husband has just been downsized, the wife is stuck in mundane mediocrity, the elder son doesn't have any sense of identity and the youngest is a rebel (he wants to play the Piano!). In an attempt to retain his honor and respect at home, the husband hides his jobless status from his family. He dresses up every morning for work, but instead spends the day in the queue for jobless for free food, or job placement. While the first act sets the characters and their dilemmas quite well, it's the second act where the movie really fails to connect. The younger son's fascination with his Piano Teacher and the elder's change-in-career weakens the story-telling before picking up again for a fascinating (and weird) third act, when the situations of the characters open up for all. Some bizarre turn-of-events brings the movie to a close that could be worthy of a rousing applause, but gets an awed gaze of amazement instead.

My Rating --> 3.5 of 5

A modern day Death of a Salesman

[Davidon80 · 9/10 · 16 April 2013]

Salary man loses his job and in order to save face lives a lie to his family by continuing to set off to work as if all was normal. Meanwhile his wife detects the changes whilst his two son's grow further away from him.

The backdrop is the 2008 Japanese recession, and throughout we see suited figures walking ghostly across the screen, some looking for jobs, others like the lead character living their own lies. The movie doesn't pull any punches in it's damming portrayal of a modern Japan, throughout we see Tokyo portrayed as confined, gritty, cold and sterile. Gone are the neon and hyper kinetics of Shubuya or the affluent Ginza, what we have are job centre queues and homeless shelter camps.

What this movie also draws light on is a sense of masculinity in the modern age. We have the sins of the father resonating throughout this movie adding to a greater sense of tragedy.

Throughout Tokyo Sonata we feel as though the tragic nature of the storyline can only head in one direction, however whereas many tragedies shows art as destruction, here we have art as saviour.

A truly touching movie, the likes of which I haven't seen in a while. The movie doesn't wallow in it's own self pity, what is shows is that all our destined paths can only be walked by us alone, no matter what ties and bonds we have made along the way.

If every movie endeavoured to convey this stark yet simple message, then I'll be for that.

Realistic and depressing

[afontanilla · 6/10 · 15 December 2010]

"What should I do with my life now?" is the question that every member in the family at the center of this story is dealing with.

The father is fired from his high position in a corporation. He is reduced to lying about his life to his family, standing in lines for free food, and eventually ends up working as a janitor. The mother struggles to keep the family together only to become a fallen woman when she gets involved with a fallen man. The oldest son doesn't know what to do with his life, so he joins the US military and goes to war in the Middle East. The youngest son might be a genius piano player, but his father forbids him from playing the piano.

A few unrealistic twists are thrown in to keep things interesting, but overall the film deals with the real questions and problems that people face. If you are pondering what you've done with your life and what direction you want to take it, then this film is for you. It is a depressing film where everyone's life takes a turn for the worse, but the end of the film shows that there is a faint sliver of hope.

Kiyoshi brings a mastery of cinema to this film.

[amorgan-8 · 10/10 · 18 June 2008]

Kiyoshi Kurosawa continues to develop his expansive ability with the film medium. I do not know of any other filmmaker today who can shift so effectively and powerfully from low-budget genre films such as his J-horror 'Pulse', thrillers such as 'Cure' to his latest work 'Tokyo Sonata', a sensitive and touching examination of the modern Japanese (disfunctional) family. It deserves all the praise it gets. If you have not yet tried a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, do so now and discover a contemporary master of cinema. If you desire understatement and enigma get hold of his works: 'Pulse', 'Charisma' and 'Barren Illusions' and his wonderful 'Bright Future', a study of youth, which has been compared to the films of Luis Bunuel. His enigmatic thriller 'Cure' rivals 'Seven' for its power. Even his made for television, short feature, 'House of Bugs' (you must excuse the title) has structural shifts that make any one interested in non-linear film-making sit up and take note. And 'Seance', another shorter feature made for television, displays an understanding of human relationships that linger long after the horror effects have faded. An understanding you can see in all his films and which he has brought to fruition in 'ToKyo Sonata'. He has used his prodigious production output (sometimes three films a year) to learn valuable lessons on how to make films that can touch you, scare you and leave you thinking long after you have finished the end credits. The only question about Kurosawa is:what will he do next?

It's amazing how bleak and depressing this film becomes...so it's certainly NOT for everyone.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 18 December 2013]

When I saw "Tokyo Sonata" I thought it was going to be a comedy. The plot sure sounds like a comedy--though it certainly is NOT. In fact, it's a super-depressing film--one that only gets worse and worse as you watch. In fact, it's so depressing that you might want to think twice about seeing it--particularly if you are out of work or middle-aged.

Mr. Sasaki is a mid-level manager. However, like what has happened so often here in the US also, his Japanese company has decided to move production to China and lay off their domestic employees. Oddly, however, he does not tell his family and continues behaving as if he's going to work each day. I really thought this was intended to be a dark comedy, but as his unemployment continued, things only got worse for him and his family. Slowly, his family began to unravel--as if each was re-inventing themselves--and not necessarily always for the better. In the process, one of Mr. Sasaki's friends kills himself and his wife, Sasaki is run over and injured, their oldest son joins the US military (I didn't know you could do that!), the wife has a brief tryst with a man who abducts her and the youngest becomes an almost instant musical prodigy (too instantly to be realistic, actually).

As I said above, none of this really is funny and is in many ways reminiscent of the film "American Pie". Mid-life crises abound in this one and they all seek new direction in life. I appreciated all this but prefer "American Pie" because it had a certain dark humor--whereas with the Sasaki family, it was mostly dark and miserable until near the end--when things improved a bit. Well made, thought-provoking and unpleasant.

By the way, I did have a few questions about what I saw in the film and I'd love to hear more about this if you can help. First, how common in Japan are unemployed men in business suits filling the parks or folks pretending they are not unemployed? The film made both seem rather common. Second, didn't the fathers seem awfully abusive in the film? Is this common or acceptable? I was rather shocked by this. Third, is it possible for ANYONE (a prodigy or not) to learn the piano THIS expertly after only about 7 months worth of lessons? Just wondering....

ordinary people doing extraordinary things

[LunarPoise · 5/10 · 17 December 2008]

Admin Chief and family patriarch Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) loses his job to the forces of globalization (the Chinese can fulfill his role cheaper), but keeps it secret from his family. Domesticity, already tense and stifling, teeters on the edge of crisis. Oldest son Takashi, inhabiting a different temporal zone from the rest of the family, looks to find peace by going, quite literally, to war. Youngest son Kenji (Kai Inowaki) harbours escape plans of his own, through a burgeoning musical talent. Even put-upon wife and mother Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) feels the pressure build inside her, and her escape will be the most dramatic of all.

The first 25 minutes of this tale crackle along in entertaining fashion. The various trials Sasaki faces in his quest for dignified employment are both sobering and amusing. In one sequence the action cuts with perfect timing from Sasaki being asked to perform a capella karaoke at a job interview, to Sasaki beating the hell out of accumulated junk at a soup kitchen. The comic tone is reinforced by the character of Kurosu, Sasaki's high-school classmate, who has turned unemployment and fooling the family into an art form. Or so it seems.

It is the abrupt change in circumstances for the ill-fated Kurosu that ushers in a new, darker tone for the story. At this point the writers go after poetry, with various characters articulating the futility of trying to regain the past. A cameo by Koji Yakusho attempts to reintroduce some comic thread in the second-half, though this serves to make the abrupt end of that particular character arc somewhat incongruous. In short, when the film goes after poetry, it falls flat. Takshi's utterances on Japan-America relations are clunky, and Kenji seems wise far beyond his years in commenting on his piano teacher's divorce. Quite why she chooses to open up to a 10-year-old is also a mystery.

The film throws everyone into crisis, and then brings them back at the end for temporary respite, in a scene that indulges sentimentality beyond acceptable limits. The journeys, not the outcomes, seem to be the thing. Especially Megumi's, in flight from the home to a place at the edge of the world, where she reaches for but can't quite obtain the light. Some will see this as a bold, lyrical choice by the filmmakers. For me it falls flat. Koizumi acts well with what she has been given, all the actors do, but these scenes are hauntingly lit interlopers with lines written by Samuel Beckett that seem to arrive from another film. If you accept that abrupt tone change after the first 25 minutes, you may celebrate this film. I found it too much to take.

Kurosawa films Tokyo evocatively, the family home sandwiched between the ever-present trains and similarly ubiquitous power lines. The acting is mostly top drawer, with only Yu Koyanagi as Takashi failing to keep his end up. The issues addressed are all-too-real for many in present-day Japan, and beyond – Tom Wilkinson's character in The Full Monty faced a similar predicament to Sasaki. Unfortunately, the philosophising in the second half is less than convincing, and the ending far too contrived. Kurosawa has said some of the laughter at Cannes was inappropriate. On the contrary, the decision to ditch the comic thread in the latter sequences of the film, and the non-linear portrayal of events, is where the inappropriacy lies. Five stars for the first half.

A Tokyo Sonata

[Duchess89 · 31 July 2011]

Ryūhei a salary man loses his job, and is soon on the scrap heap of the unemployed, a very common and relevant case for so many in these times.

In this case the film documents what it means to be a working man or woman, a case of how a job can define a person. In the case of Ryūhei it's the struggle to maintain that sense of honour and pride that is so ingrained in Japanese culture, that when he is finally let go, he simply packs his belongings from work and walks out-not a word to his colleagues, and not a word to his family.

The next morning he leaves for 'work' donned in the usual work attire spending the day on the fringes of regular life-lining up for free food, sitting in public libraries, roaming the various employment offices for vacancies, then coming home earlier then usual to face the doom of subsequent family expenses (the son wants to take piano lessons, the wife wants a new car, the heater needs to be replaced).

Despite the downward spiral into despair for which this film descends into,there is a feeling of a more hopeful future.

lyrics of economical breakdown and global war (on terrorism?)

[cookie_on_fire · 9/10 · 9 October 2008]

Unlike many cineasts, I was not fond of Kurosawa's early works. I think I even LEFT at one. Sorry. Since I've read this movie is different and doesn't contain the horror stuff that chased me away before, I luckily gave it a chance.

I love the movie's tempo: there is enough detail put on each of the characters. A traditional father figure as a bread winner is dissolving. Other traditional roles are vanishing as well. Surprisingly, we find the strongest, central figure, to be the youngest family member. Unlike quiet, pulled back and distant children, portrayed frequently in movies as innocent observers, accompanied by cheesy music, we face a surprisingly strong character, a decision maker and the only one who takes constructive actions to achieve something, in spite of many obstacles. Regardless of this child's effort, the entire family is shattered in a fairly short time into something that seems impossible to put back together to the viewer. Identity crisis, age crisis, economical crisis, marital crisis, a pile of broken bones and some ink to take the fingerprints at the police. Some death (I wonder if the glorification of a suicide is really necessary, therefore I don't give it a 10). Great drama and interesting humorous perspectives, discretely intertwined in a story. There is no doubt this is a masterpiece. Don't miss it, you won't regret seeing it!

A Nutshell Review: Tokyo Sonata

[DICK STEEL · 10/10 · 19 September 2009]

Moral authority as shown is a given, and it can be so fragile and easily destroyed. Kenji Sasaki (Inowaki Kai), the youngest son, in a scene with his school teacher, creates havoc by just merely stating the fact that the latter had been seen reading a porn comic on a train. Immediately the students entered into an ill-disciplined frenzy in the class which the teacher has little control over, a signal that he has lost all standing in imparting knowledge to minds that are to be molded.

And in the main arc, face and standing in society are both easily lost as well, which the head of the Sasaki household Ryuhei (Teruyuki Kagawa) will discover when he gets retrenched as Director of Administration of a corporation. Being clueless on what to do, and how to break the news to his family (which will translate in equivalent terms into the chaos as seen in the classroom), he keeps mum and goes about his routine, heading toward free food lines and unemployment agencies to find another job. But one can imagine the stature of his previous job, and it never is easy to come to terms in the swallowing of Pride, and the acceptance of lower pay, longer hours, and of course, jobs that seem to belong to the lower rungs.

Teriyuki Kagawa does a superb job in showing this fear and cluelessness of Ryuhei, who has to grapple with the fact that a victim of downsizing unfortunately has to have his expectations correspondingly reduced in tandem as well. Ever once in a while I would think of what I would do if I'm in the same shoes, and hopefully to lessen the impact should one day the same were to happen. Being unprepared on the receiving end of an outsourcing strategy, he got hit pretty hard, and living a lie to keep up the pretense is something quite pathetic.

For all its prim and properness, society can be equally cruel because of the collective fear that hangs over the heads of failures. There are two superbly crafted arcs in Tokyo Sonata, each dealing with failure and the unfortunate ends that were followed to deal with the perceived shame and genuine despair and desperation. One involved Ryuhei's peer who went to the extreme of making himself seem busy with lucrative deals, but is actually sharing the same boat, at wits end since he's a 3-month old unemployed veteran who imparts survival tricks of concealment, and refuge such as the public library (I suppose with its air-conditioning, newspapers, and couches for that quick snooze. The other arc is somewhat of a quirky spin on narrative, with Koji Yakusho playing a comical rookie robber who, as it turns out, had consistently failed in the things he does.

While a patriarchal society, the role of the wife and mother is equally important for the household to function and act as the glue of tolerance within the family. Kyoko Koizumi owned this character of Megumi, as she goes about her routine household chores with nary a complaint, always being there for her family in the preparation of warm meals, never chiding her husband or put him down when she learns of the truth accidentally (well, up to a certain point that is), and always protective of her children, seen from her constant reminder to her husband not to get mad when the children are going to tell him something he would disapprove of, coming to their defence when they get beat, and with reluctance, seeing her eldest son (Yu Koyanagi) off when he signs on with the American military. There's a breaking point in everyone, though of course a mother's love knows no bounds.

Kurosawa's films are always wonderfully framed, and Tokyo Sonata boasts plenty of beautifully designed shots, not only for aesthetic reasons, but some to involve you in the scene as well. I especially liked the way how the dreaded pink slip got issued, where Ryuhei seemed so small, for an appointment of his stature, when called into his boss' office, and being challenged up front on what else he can contribute to the company, being asked to leave in indirect terms, yet with the meaning fully understood.

The routine, impersonal way of the Sasaki family that we see in the beginning, each going about their own thing with nary an interaction other than over the dining table with a missing member, doesn't really get repaired. Some issues can be addressed, others can be accepted, life generally goes on and it's up to us to make the best out of it. The Sasaki family has this brief hiccup in their lives that forms the basis of Tokyo Sonata, and it's something that will both move you and bring about that general awareness of how Japanese society ticks. Definitely highly recommended, and a surprise of a gem from Kiyoshi Kurosawa that's not from his usual forte of works.

A Good Movie About Life

[gonomon · 7/10 · 30 December 2018]

Tokyo Sonata. The main fuel of this movie is hard times that people encounter. This movie is not something abstract in my opinion, its very concrete in the way of telling the story. I believe that, characters in this movie designed in a way that even if the story is concrete and its something that people can come across every day, you can feel characters feelings and this adds a little bit of abstractness to it as well. To sum this up Tokyo Sonata has succeeded in showing sides of life that we all know in a striking way that does not bore the watchers.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's family game

[Chris Knipp · 8/10 · 9 October 2008]

Parental job loss leads to family meltdowns leading to collective desperation, crisis, and tentative resolution. That is the trajectory of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's new film which has its weird uneasy moments, but departs notably from the sui generis horror mode the director of 'Cure', 'Pulse,' etc. is most noted for, at least abroad. And justifiably noted: this new younger Kurosawa's creepy strangeness at its best is very original. In this latest effort he shifts to the sad humanism of Fellini's 'La Strada' (which the director suggested his principal actor watch to get a take on what he was doing) or the old master Akira Kurosawa's unbearably touching 'Do-des-ka-den.'

Not as comically raucous, violent or eventful as Yoshimitsu Morita's 1983 'The Family Game,' 'Tokyo Sonata' nonetheless deals similarly with kids in revolt in a disintegrating middle class Japanese family. When Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) loses his managerial job the effect at home is gradual and subtle because he pretends it hasn't even happened, going out in suit and tie every work day as usual. Japanese men are commonly so shame-averse and obsessed with appearances, Ryuhei's concealment of job loss doesn't seem surreal as it does in Laurent Cantet's 'Time Out' but almost natural. In fact the library Sasaki's out-of-work classmate Kurosu (Kaniji Tsuda) shows him to while away daytime hours seems full of similarly idle suited men. Kurosu and Ryuhei have met near a lunchtime free-food line both are patronizing. Even there, Kurosu has set his cell phone to ring five times an hour and holds mock business calls. His bravado impresses Sasaki, but Kurosu is closer to desperation than Sasaki realizes. Sasaki's own emotional collapse comes on more gradually, and shows up in increasingly ill-repressed anger.

While dinners in 'The Family Game' were a hilarious battleground, and family meals in Japanese films, Ozu's included, traditionally are times for significant developments, Kurosawa deliberately stages meals in which Sasaki family members barely ever speak more than a few monosyllables. Ryuhei's wife Megumi (Kyoko Kozumi) suffers in silence, suspecting even from the first day, when she happens to catch her husband sneaking in the house early, but saying nothing. Meanwhile their two sons have their own stories. The older teenager, Takashi (Ju Koyanagi) has a nothing job giving out tissues; he and his friend can't get anyone to take them and dump a big box of them into the river.

Takashi eventually decides to join the US Army; in the story, which extrapolates from current trends, the Japanese government has granted permission for a hundred or so to do that, and Takashi's sent to Iraq. The younger son, Kenji (Kai Inowaki), though innocent and sweet-looking, is an outspoken misfit at school, publicly mocking his teacher in front of the whole class for reading erotic manga on the train. Kenji finds a lovely piano teacher, Kaneko (Haruka Igawa), and when his father utterly rejects his taking lessons, uses his monthly school lunch money of 5,000 Yen to secretly pay for them. Kaneko discovers that Kenji has an extraordinary gift and wants him to go to a special school, but this only leads to a violent confrontation with his father--and Megumi's more pronounced alienation from her husband. Once it's clear Ryuhei's jobless, he has no family authority and his efforts to block both sons' choices become even more totally futile.

When interviewed at the New York Film Festival, Kurosawa said that some of the big laughs his film received at Cannes were "wildly inappropriate," but "occasional chuckles" would be fine. Ryuhei's antics with Kurosu and Kenki's scenes with his teacher certainly are comical. So is the moment when Megumi discovers Ryuhei in red overalls secretly working part-time on a clean-up squad at a shopping mall. This incident leads to a two-hour flashback to a surprising event at home of Tarantino-like proportions. The continuation of that bizarre adventure, involving strangers wandering off in a car, may owe something to Takeshi Kitano.

From then on the plot leads in directions that are alternately tragicomic and uplifting. Takashi has chosen to work out his salvation in his own far-off way. Nothing else is resolved in the family, but Kenji's talent may be rewarded. There is business with a new-model small Peugeot with a vanishing hardtop that may be unnecessary, and the last scene, though touching, is somewhat indulgent. On the other hand, there and elsewhere Kurosawa shows he has not lost his skill at achieving haunting moments with minimalist means. The complexly neutral cityscapes have a typical cold, unnerving beauty.

Kurosawa worked out his story with Sachiko Tanaka from a script by the Australian writer Max Mannix--giving more importance in their rewrite to the older son and especially to the wife, who has her own distinct and climactic episode, something outside the usual male-dominated Japanese family mindset. Though there's some uncertainty of tone and some cutting might have helped, Kurosawa tells an interesting, sometimes even moving story and has completely escaped from his alleged recent "J-horror" genre doldrums. This film won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes this year--the only Japanese title to get a Cannes award. It's been bought in the US by Regent Releasing. Seen as part of the New York Film Festival.

Not an exceptional movie but a curiously haunting one for one reason or another.

[GiraffeDoor · 6/10 · 18 March 2019]

A straight forward, unassuming drama of family struggles. Its tone is serious but it's not above brief moments of humour and lyricism.

Although it begins with following the father's attempts to hide his unemployment from his family it then develops into following the lives of the son and the mother who have their own issues to figure out.

it's quiet and strangely hypnotic and although sometimes a little excruciating at times, there's an honesty and a restraint about these scenes. Not the sensationalism of the average soap.

The conflict is far from strictly domestic. It takes you to a dark place where our lives can easily get lost in the noise of life.

it's a very poignant but unsentimental tale of a family gradually learning that if nothing else they have each other, which may sound rather trite but it does it well, the plot developing to a fine set of climaxes for all three characters.

Tokyo Sonata succinctly builds up a crescendo of realism before culminating on a heartfelt chord.

[TheMovieDiorama · 8/10 · 22 May 2020]

The Sasaki family, a middle-class household at the heart of urban Tokyo, relish and rely upon the constant income provided by patriarchal figure Ryuhei. An administrative manager working for a bustling corporation. His youngest son's supply of school lunch money dependant on his consistently high salary. His wife's matriarchal duties conditional on the house that Ryuhei can afford. So when Ryuhei is suddenly fired from his job, after the discovery that Chinese workers are more economically viable to employ, the pressure of adult life itself and its parental responsibilities soon test the family's trustworthiness and pride.

Kurosawa's familial drama, harking back to similar styles found in Ozu's filmography, is profoundly his most terrifying feature to date. The gruesome murders in 'Cure' and supernatural entities in 'Pulse', arguably his two most famous films, do not compare to the palpable realness of unemployment. The colossal of pressure of having to provide a future, not just for one's self, but the entirety of one's family. In Japan, family structures are fairly archaic and traditional. The patriarch obtains a career and provides financial support. The matriarch stays at home and cares for her children and abode. Strict dinner rules and social measures are attained to assert parental authority. Therefore, if the source of income dissipates, the family structure crumbles and shame is brought upon them. That fatherly dominance vanished in an instant. Kurosawa bravely explores that rise in tension, with pride and self-esteem controlling Ryuhei as he continually deceives his wife and family.

Much like many Japanese white-collared workers, he continually pretends to venture out to work everyday when in fact he is searching for potential lower income jobs, befriending other downsized employees in the process. Living a life in secrecy, unable to face his family with the truth. His wife swiftly figures his complication out, but eagerly awaits for him to address the family. He never does. And it is with this erudite situation, that Kurosawa's beautifully composed screenplay traverses the societal pressures of modern Japan. Implying the correlation between rising unemployment numbers and suicide rates, without ever resorting to melodrama. He exquisitely inspects each character and their familial contribution and consequence through a deliciously adept third act that, whilst admittedly sharply modified the feature's tone and pace to an abrupt degree, confronted the maximum magnitude of their existential perturbation. Experiencing the brief life of a segregated family for one fearful night.

Only to then conclude on what is possibly one of the greatest final scenes to be ever put on film. A flawless performance of Debussy's 'Clair De Lune' in elongated uninterrupted shots. Raw, captivating, and enough to generate a solemn tear. Simply beautiful. If only Kurosawa had implemented more lingering shots like its final masterpiece, such as Megumi waving her eldest son farewell as joins the US military, the inner beauty of such horrific complications could've been slightly more impactful. And to further accentuate Ashizawa's confident cinematography that captured the fragility of modern Tokyo with assurance. Fortunately the cast add the essential ingredient to the familial drama. Authenticity. Both Kagawa and Koizumi offer composed yet emotionally vulnerable individuals that weigh in on the pressures of societal lifestyles. Inowaki, whilst not as memorable, supplies endless amounts of maturity to his young character that accompanies Kurosawa's thematic endeavours.

As mentioned before, this is unlike his previous horror features. The suffocating terror that resides within Tokyo Sonata, is with how real the situation feels. That sensitive relatability to the searing pressures of unemployment, a statistic that is often concealed by several nations. Kurosawa manages to orchestrate a dramatic composition that eloquently enthrals with each passing minute.

Well worth lending both your ears and eyes to this particular Sonata, as the unit of a Japanese family slowly crumbles in an ever-changing contemporary world.

[johnnyboyz · 7/10 · 13 February 2011]

We meet the characters in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's really well made 2009 Japanese film Tokyo Sonata as they hover very delicately over a precipice in life; the resulting drama born out of several frustrations and rather life changing events, as children grow up into young adults and middle aged men supposedly grow up into obsolete old age, captured wonderfully thanks largely to a sophisticated and level headed script complimented by some fabulous direction. The film will begin with a very harmonious glide over the rooms of a Toyko based home, the rain falling outside as everything lies still in this tranquil but largely colourless series of places of dwelling. When we finally get sight of flesh and blood, it's of a woman sitting on the floor beside a kitchen back-door, her actions of shutting the door to stop the water drifting in and making a mess then counteracted by her own opening of it back up again to prevent the prevention. Such an action is, at the be-all and end-all, somewhat destructive; a sabotaging of one's better being so as to allow for chaos, however minute in the form of rainwater blowing in and saturating the general area, to unfold and consume the area quite clearly on show. As Kurosawa's film rolls on, we begin to realise anger; frustration and destructive natures play an awfully large part in the lives of the family whom lives in the house, but with stakes and well being greatly raised above that of a wet floor.

The film is ultimately about the family members' forging of new identities, forced or otherwise, and advancing on in life whilst systematically having to deal with the fact precisely this is simultaneously happening to each of those within the unit around them. Kurosawa balances each of the respective plights efficiently and methodically, one character's decent into unemployment after so many years granted as much screen time as another's lust to learn the piano as another character announces his desire to branch off into the army following menial work here and there. His film borrows largely from the works of another Japanese director named Ozu but is neatly distilled, at least for the early part, through a filter of often black comedy that combines well with undercurrents of social realism reminiscent of a certain Mike Leigh. Tokyo Sonata zeroes in on the husband and father of the Sasaki family named Ryûhei (Kagawa); his two sons named Kenji (Inowaki) and Takashi (Koyanagi) as well as wife and the mother of these sons Megumi (Koizumi), each of them here captured as going through a respective transitional phase as several stages of the bounding forward in one's life occurs at once to many of them.

The catalyst appears to be the firing of Ryûhei from his steady office job and inability to confirm to his home unit this news, his employers stating that never again will Ryûhei be able to work under the same circumstances as he did before nor in a similar job; that the modernising and expansion into territory which sees an influx of Chinese orientated territory has effectively rendered his contribution null and void. At home, the essence of both modernity, globalisation and the products of the modern age further-still seep into his life when his two sons cause such ripples. Kenji is a young boy on the cusp of leaving school before most probably moving into the working world; on the way home from school, and after the film has established he is unafraid to answer back to figures of authority – something which is key for later on, the film captures his gazing at a piano sitting in a teacher's living room as she instructs. On top of this, eldest son Takashi is sick of working as a leaflet distributor and tells his parents he is volunteering for a special, more specific role in the Armed Forces to do with aiding the Americans if needs be in The Middle East in an "aren't-we-all-happy-now-that-the-first-world-is-as-one" programme the product of globalisation.

Around Ryûhei, many men of his age are equally unemployed with one such individual an old school acquaintance whom he runs into; here suggesting an entire generation of men being phased out by modernity and globalisation with similar things happening at each of their companies as happened to Ryûhei. His disdain at both of his sons becoming preoccupied with items infused within a sufficiently contemporary ideal, namely the desire to pay for piano lessons and become more enthused in an item of culture rather than head directly into employment directly out of school; or to nominate oneself to aid another nation entirely in fighting a foreign war, is purely the sign of the changing times and how things are now different when compared to Ryûhei's childhood, symptomatically running with Ryûhei's own loss of a clear cut grasp on the modern world following his redundancy. Embedded at the core of all this is Megumi, a character whose own respective journey culminates, through one means or another, in her occupying a beached locale in which the raging sea and jagged rocks form a messy pattern on one half of the frame with flatter, more normalised terrain placed directly opposite, thus neatly capturing the extreme shifts in madness and confusion with the normality that plagues her life. Tokyo Sonata is rather deeply involving, the strands connecting together and staying rather impressively true to overall tone quite well, and I look forward to seeing more of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's work in the future.

The conduit zombie

[fablesofthereconstru-1 · 10/10 · 1 May 2009]

For the price of one Japanese man, the company that Ryuhei Sasaki(Teruyuki Sasaki) works for can hire three foreigners. His replacements are Chinese; they're cheaper. The irony of this economic reality is underpinned by the historical relationship between both nations. During World War II, Chinese lives were cheap too, and expendable. Japanese soldier marauded their mainland neighbors and razed entire villages to the ground. When the Chinese businesswoman in "Tokyo Sonata" restructures Sasaki's company, the horror of Japan's war atrocities comes back to haunt one man, one expendable man. Cheapness becomes a virtue in the language of business. Victimized by downsizing, Sasaki's predicament is heightened by the fact that these ancestors of his replacements were downsized too, literally, via holocaust. Already construed as a horror film by many, "Tokyo Sonata" singles out this seemingly innocent man to pay the price for the aggression that Japan unleashed on its fellow man throughout the progressions of the second world war. But there's a new wind blowing in contemporary Japan. It's a vapor that Ryuhei's wife Megumi(Kyoko Koizumi) can't see when she closes the sliding door in her home as a preventive measure against the elements. At that moment, unbeknownst to her, somebody is turning Japanese. That Chinese woman is turning Japanese; she's in charge; she speaks the language, and turns Sasaki's world, as he once knew it, inside-out.

The film's similarities to a zombie flick is unquestionable. Ryuhei dies, in a sense, once he's terminated from his lofty position at the firm. Nowthat the workplace is no longer this company man's destination when he leaves the house each morning, the suit and tie that this jobless man wears seems more like effects for his own funeral. The formal attire is a outward projection of how Ryuhei still sees himself; the hard-working husband and family man who comes home every evening like clockwork for a sit-down dinner with his wife and two sons, Takashi(Yu Koyanagi) and Kenji(Inowaki Kai). Underestimating Megumi's powers of observation, the jig is up fairly quick on Ryuhei's ruse, probably as early as that first day of his termination. Like a zombie, Ryhuhei remembers his old life but gets it a little wrong. Rather than use the front door, he surprises his wife by using an alternate entrance on the second floor. He's forgotten the music(muted just like the absence of sound from Kenji's broken keyboard) from that former existence, which included, coming home as if he belonged there, instead of sneaking in as an interloper would. But Japan knows all about being an intruder. On December 7, 1941, they declared war on the United States when they bombed Pearl Harbor, killing many. To Ryuhei's additional horror and chagrin, his older son joins the army to help their former enemy fight Iraq. Takashi rebels against the Shinto ideal of nationalism by reaching out to another country in need. It's probably no accident that Ryuhei's beliefs reflect those of wartime Japan who saw themselves as racially superior to both the Chinese and the Americans. Back then, Shintoism was the country's official religion and is often blamed for the country's modus operandi of nationalism and world domination. The filmmaker expertly conveys Japan's character visually, in a scene where lunchtime businessmen sit on individual pedestals, round seats of raised rock, that isolates each man as they eat, a collective of individualists.

"Tokyo Sonata" undergoes a tonal shift late in the film that's jarring, yet entirely appropriate to the filmmaker's goal of showing how the guises of the family members no longer suit them. To some extent, they're all dead. Since a textile(even a janitor's uniform, which the former businessman now wears in a mall, recalling George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead") doesn't decompose like human flesh, Ryuhei's family are infected by the zombie among them. The father doesn't eat his younger son's brains, but Kenji's grey matter gets knocked around a bit after the zombie "accidentally" causes his charge to slide down a flight of stairs. Meanwhile, Megumi is involved in a ludicrous kidnapping subplot(her abductor is hilarious), which ends at a shoreline, where the mother experiences an existential epiphany while ambling near the water: "I'm dead. I'm a housewife, a zombie." As for the main character, Ryuhei seemingly becomes undead for real as he emerges from the ground after being on the vulnerable side of a hit and run. In the final scene, he hears music with new ears, the music of his younger son, the music of new Japan; a sonata, which is more in tune with the rest of the world than the traditional music of their bloody past.

Japanese version of "Revolutionary Road"?

[KineticSeoul · 7/10 · 12 April 2010]

This was like a Japanese version of "Revolutionary Road" for me with it's portrayal of a downfall of a family, except "Revolutionary Road" is set in the 1950's while this is set in present time but go through similar crisis. And this film isn't for everyone, cause just about every character in this film isn't really likable and just way too normal and throughout most of the film go through realistic normal life. This film is basically about how just about some everyday people go through a difficult journey while wishing they can start all over. For those wanting to watch a movie to get away from real life for a few hours, should pass on this one cause the portrayal of real life and the struggles can be a bit depressing while the problem is pretty common amongst other people and not just the Sasaki family. Some people will just enjoy this more than others.

7.5/10

Not Kurosawa's best

[poikkeus · 4/10 · 14 April 2009]

Kiyoshi Kurosawa scored with evocative films like EYES OF THE SPIDER and CURE, but TOKYO SONATA falls into the trap of easy allegory in its depressing story of a family that splinters apart under the pressure of greed.

Using a low budget and less-known actors (save perhaps by the surprise appearance of Kurosawa regular Koji Yakusha), the plot unfolds slowly, using grainy photography to underline a feeling of economic decline. The film sometimes seems almost random - which may have been intended, but its general pattern becomes clear only after you've reflected on it for a while.

Grim, unpleasant, and frankly rather flabby in the storytelling department.