The manicured order of a tastefully appointed home is disarranged by a sudden wind rushing through an open window at the start of Tokyo Sonata. Cut to a drab and cubicled office, where the home’s owner is about to be swept away by a metaphorical storm. In bland tones, Sasaki’s boss informs him that his management job has been eliminated. For American audiences, it might be a surprise that Japan’s white-collar workers, the loyal and industrious “salarymen,” are losing out to cheap, outsourced Chinese labor.
Tokyo Sonata, a Cannes Film Festival award winner out on DVD, begins as a droll social comedy and takes many intriguingly odd and dramatic turns. The director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, established his reputation for horror films such as Pulse and Cure. Perhaps a remnant of his genre past is apparent in Tokyo Sonata’s awareness of the inexplicable and the nightmares suffered by some of its characters. But in large part, the film is an unsparing look at a contemporary Japanese society that has stopped keeping its promises and the perils of mindless authoritarianism.
In Tokyo Sonata, the ranks of the unemployed are thick and the lines at the soup kitchens and job bureaus are long. Because his job is the source of his identity and authority, Sasaki is too humiliated to admit its loss to his wife and family, and dons his suit and tie each morning, pretending to go to work. He discovers many men like him, killing time and pretending to work so as not to shame themselves. Meanwhile, Sasaki’s youngest boy sneaks off to piano lessons after being forbidden (for no good reason) to do so, and his oldest son enlists in the U.S. Army (is that really possible?). Although Sasaki strains to hold together the appearance of traditional family life and his own power, the stresses and opportunities of postmodern society are blowing his well-ordered existence apart.
