| ID | 108791 |
| Title Proper | Emotional spaces and places of salaryman anxiety in Tokyo Sonata |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Dasgupta, Romit |
| Publication | 2011. |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | In this article I discuss the ways in which the 2008 film Tokyo Sonata engages with the contrasting emotional and physical geographies of comfortable suburbia and the contemporary reality of socio-cultural despondency. The Sasaki family is the embodiment of the quintessential nuclear family of urban, middle-class Japan. Their world starts unravelling the day the father, Sasaki Ryuhei, is laid off from his middle-management job. Unwilling to reveal this to his family, Ryuhei continues to leave for work each morning dressed in his suit, but spends his days in a park inhabited by homeless men. Ultimately, he finds employment as a cleaner in a shopping mall. Ryuhei's journey from white-collar salaryman to menial worker is set against the backdrop of collective anxiety in the intermeshing physical and emotional 'scapes' of recession-era Tokyo. I argue that, at the core, this is an anxiety about the loss of masculine authority in the home and the workplace, and at the level of Japan as a nation. Moreover, it is an anxiety that cannot be fully appreciated without reference to the framing social, cultural, economic and emotional topographies of post-bubble Japan. |
| `In' analytical Note | Japanese Studies Vol. 31, No. 3; Dec 2011: p.373-386 |
| Journal Source | Japanese Studies Vol. 31, No. 3; Dec 2011: p.373-386 |
| Key Words | Japan ; Emotional Spaces ; Tokyo Sonata ; Salaryman Anxiety ; Middle - Class Japan |