It was September 2008 that I first went to Japan, mainly Tokyo; eight
years ago to this month. This is around the same sort of time that Kiyoshi
Kurosawa's 'Tokyo Sonata' was released. Eight years on, my love-affair with
Japanese culture, particularly its cinema, still holds strong, but can the same
still be said for the film which I first saw in January 2009.
For me, a real test of any piece of art is: in ten years time will you
still be watching/listening/reading/however you choose to consume it? While not
quite a decade, I have recently re-watched 'Tokyo Sonata', a film I have now watched
a number of times. While it is quite simple in its premise, and possibly in its
conclusions also, it is a film that I always find more to appreciate with each
viewing.
Around the time of the global 'credit crunch', salaryman Sasaki finds
his department being outsourced to China as part of a cost-saving measure.
Unable to find any other skill he can offer the company, he is left middle-aged
and unemployed, but too proud to reveal his new status to his wife and family.
He, therefore, spends his days queuing for free meals, at job agencies and
finding ways to pass the time in his suit with briefcase to complete the facade
of 9-5 mundanity to his wife.
But he is not the only member of the family keeping secrets: Wife
Megumi takes secret driving lessons to attain her license; eldest son Takashi wants
to join the US foreign volunteer army; and youngest son Kenji uses his lunch
money to fund after school piano lessons. While portraying a perfectly ordinary
family unit, the four lack basic communication and any real knowledge of each
other's lives.
For a film with Tokyo in the title, this isn't perhaps specific to
Japan's capital itself in terms of the modern problems faced. Referencing the
global financial crisis of the last decade and war in the Middle East were problems
for every country, and so nothing unique to Japan. What does make it Tokyoite
though is its use of shots of some of the less obvious parts of Tokyo, focusing
on the more mundane and ordinary parts of the metropolis, a far cry from the
typical shots foreign-made films will use to portray Tokyo.
Filming much of the piece in more gloomy twilight also adds to this
sense of the ordinary, but also the changing of state in the lives of the main
characters, as they take a turn for the worse, reminiscent of Kore-eda
Hirokazu's 'Maborosi'. While in parts clunky in how they get there, the
father, mother and youngest son all find themselves hitting low points: waking
in a gutter, an abandoned beach hut and prison cell respectively, as the most
ordinary of families finds itself quickly dysfunctional from their own lack of
communication.
Kurosawa is perhaps known more for horror, suspense and mystery than
Ozu-esque family structures, but here combining the use of twilight with the
film's soundtrack create a haunting image of Tokyo, different from most,
showing the city in a different light.
While nothing distinctively groundbreaking in terms of moral message,
warning of the dangers of modern isolation and its affect of traditional family
structures, it is still a message that holds relevant today, despite its distinctively
Naughties setting.
While not perfect, there are some brilliant scenes, notably the
revelation of Kenji's piano lessons resulting in a trip to A+E and the film's
conclusion where, for once, the family listen to each other. While fairly
run-of-the-mill in conclusion, the blank-faced audience left watching them is
less so, in anticipation of what is to come.
