ABSTRACT
In this chapter focuses on the ways in which the socio-economic and cultural shifts of the 1990s and 2000s, in particular in relation to hegemonic discourses of gender and family, are played out in Kurosawa Kiyoshi's multi-award winning 2008 feature film, Tokyo Sonata. It explores the ways in which the film engages with this crumbling of the gender ideology underpinning post-war Japan, both at the micro level of the family, and in the wider national context. The chapter contends that at the heart of this anxiety is a concern about the loss of authority and emasculation, of both the Japanese nation-state and the salaryman husband and father. It traces the emergence of the discourse of the salaryman, and the salaryman-centred family, in the context of Japan's project of modernisation and nation-building. The chapter look at the impact of the post-bubble socio-economic and cultural upheavals on the salaryman discourse, as the hegemonic ideals surrounding masculinity underwent significant change.
