Based on a story by Australian writer Max Mannix, Tokyo Sonata follows the unraveling of a Japanese family riddled with deception and alienation.  Father Ryuhei is too proud to tell his family his job has been outsourced to China; oldest son Takashi is devising secret plans; young Kenji is secretly taking piano lessons against his father's wishes; and mother Megumi feels cut off from everyone.  Masterfully pitched between comedy, tragedy and surreal irrationality, Kurosawa's fable perfectly captures the impact of the upheavals of uncertainty in an age of globalization.

Selected Filmography: The Excitement of the Do-Re-Me-Fa Girl (85), Cure (98), Bright Future (03), Retribution (06).

"This wise and deliciously witty film chronicles eight years of a marriage.  In 1992, shoe repairman Kanao ties the knot with Shoko, who works in publishing, because he's got her pregnant.  Apart from liking each other, they don't have too much in common.  She's a bit of a control freak, and he's, well, loose and easy-going.  Kanao takes over a TV news job as a courtroom sketch-artist and he soon finds himself exposed to--and drawing--some of the most disturbed people in Japan, from child murderers to a member of the Aum sect which gas-attacked the Tokyo subway.  Meanwhile Shoko, traumatized by a miscarriage, begins to fall apart; she needs to retreat from her job and from Tokyo to recover her equilibrium.  Through it all Hashiguchi gets right to the heart of what it takes for two people to nurture each other and hold it all together." --Vancouver Film Festival. 

Filmography: A Secret Evening (89), Touch of Fever (93), Like Grains of Sand (95), Hush (01).