Reflection paper on Tokyo Sonata
Reflection Paper #3: Tokyo Sonata
The movie Tokyo Sonata shows an ordinary Japanese family, whose members have own secrets that they try to hide from each other. The father, Ryuhei Sasaki, is fired from his work, and the mother, Megumi always feels lonely. Their first son Tadashi suddenly enlists for the US Army, and the younger son Kenji secretly dreams of becoming a pianist. In my opinion, this movie highlights the absence of communication in families in contemporary Japanese society.
I couldn’t really sympathize with the family described in the movie because my family members get along amicably with each other. Coming back from school, I and my younger brother enjoyed talking to mother about things happened in that day. So did my father when he came back from work. Whenever I confront problems that I cannot handle by myself, I seek help from my parents. Though my father is patriarchal in some sense, just like Ryuhei in the movie, he doesn’t hesitate to ask other family members for advice when he needs to. However, as I know that absence of communication has been a serious problem in many families in contemporary society, I was able to understand what the movie was trying to say. Since the movie deals with family matters, dining table appears several times. The dining table probably symbolizes the place where all members gather as a family. And I noticed that it happens only once that all members gather to have a meal, which illustrates lack of communication among family members. Conversations on the dining table during meals play an important role in developing relationship among members, yet those are lost in Kenji’s family. I think the director is trying to show that this lack of communication serves as the cause of the problems every member in Kenji’s family suffers. If they had shown just a little interest in each other’s problems, situations would not have been this bad. Megumi was so pathetic when she says “I hope all these happening in my life
The movie Tokyo Sonata shows an ordinary Japanese family, whose members have own secrets that they try to hide from each other. The father, Ryuhei Sasaki, is fired from his work, and the mother, Megumi always feels lonely. Their first son Tadashi suddenly enlists for the US Army, and the younger son Kenji secretly dreams of becoming a pianist. In my opinion, this movie highlights the absence of communication in families in contemporary Japanese society.
I couldn’t really sympathize with the family described in the movie because my family members get along amicably with each other. Coming back from school, I and my younger brother enjoyed talking to mother about things happened in that day. So did my father when he came back from work. Whenever I confront problems that I cannot handle by myself, I seek help from my parents. Though my father is patriarchal in some sense, just like Ryuhei in the movie, he doesn’t hesitate to ask other family members for advice when he needs to. However, as I know that absence of communication has been a serious problem in many families in contemporary society, I was able to understand what the movie was trying to say. Since the movie deals with family matters, dining table appears several times. The dining table probably symbolizes the place where all members gather as a family. And I noticed that it happens only once that all members gather to have a meal, which illustrates lack of communication among family members. Conversations on the dining table during meals play an important role in developing relationship among members, yet those are lost in Kenji’s family. I think the director is trying to show that this lack of communication serves as the cause of the problems every member in Kenji’s family suffers. If they had shown just a little interest in each other’s problems, situations would not have been this bad. Megumi was so pathetic when she says “I hope all these happening in my life