Tokyo Sonata is the latest invention of Kiryoshi Kurosawa's generous artistic soul, and an archetypal product of a powerful cinema prone to investigating the borders between the visible and the invisible. Straying from the trendy J-horror genre, the master of Japanese chills ventures into family drama, territory that carrries a different dark suspense.

Loyal salary man Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) loses his job when his company begins outsourcing to China. Incapable of facing the tragedy of his new reality, he hides his failure from his family and, weaving an intricate web of lies, pretends to have kept his job. As it truns out, he is not alone in this deception. At home, he tries to maintain the normal routine, though it soon becomes clear that this family has tragically lost touch with one another. His wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) attends to her chores and keeps up with their two boys, rebellious college-age Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) and quiet, younger Kenji (Kai Inowaki). However, nothing feels or looks the same for Ryuhei, who has lost his honour and his place in society. Kenji's simple request for extra money to take piano lessons however tips the balance of their artificially sustained family stability, pushing it over a ruinous precipice of unforeseeable external events.

Kurosawa's quiet elegant direction guides his actors - especially Koizumi and Kagawa - to outstanding performances. As a wife left starving for affection and contact, Koizumi is devastating and she never exploits the natural pathos of her character's plight. At the same time Kurosawa puts his own stamp on the domestic drama genre. The family is ordinary, but the narrative takes unusual turns. The mise-en-scène lends an eerie mood. Overall, the effect is of a poignant reflection on a kind of mass uncertainty sweeping Japan.
— Film note by Giovanna Fulvi for TIFF '08