The following edition of the text was used in the creation of this study guide: Madalosso, Giovana. The Tokyo Suite. Europa Editions, 2025. Kindle AZW file.

Maju, a maid in São Paulo, Brazil, kidnaps Cora, the child who is in her care. Maju leaves the family's apartment by bus. She avoids taxis to prevent anyone from recognizing them. Cora becomes upset during the trip, drawing attention and increasing Maju’s anxiety about being remembered. Cora’s mother, Fernanda, is with her lover named Yara. Thus, she ignores calls from Caca, her husband. When Fernanda returns home, she and Cacá realize Maju and Cora are missing but assume they may be visiting Fernanda’s mother’s farm due to the poor phone reception there. Cacá contacts other parents while Fernanda continues messaging Yara.

Maju plans to take Cora across the border into Paraguay to obtain false identification, then return to Brazil to raise her as her own child. She tells Cora to choose a new name, and Cora chooses Ana. Fernanda recalls an earlier incident in which Cora had a tantrum on a plane, humiliating Fernanda. Around that time, Fernanda accepted a demanding promotion and paid Maju to live with the family full-time, limiting Maju’s contact with her husband Lauro. Maju remembers meeting and marrying Lauro. Initially, she had refused Fernanda’s offer because she and Lauro wanted a child. Fernanda proposed limited monthly visits home so they could try to conceive, and Maju accepted the job because she felt the money was more than she could turn down. The distance strained the marriage, and Lauro eventually left, devastating Maju.

Maju remembers another maid, Neide, who offered her baby for adoption. Later, Nerde abandoned the child and was imprisoned. After Lauro left, Maju regretted not adopting the baby. However, she now feels satisfied with taking Cora. Fernanda recalls visiting a filming location with Yara and learning about Yara’s childhood and her father’s research.

During a bus stop, Cora loses her toy, causing Maju to miss their bus. Maju realizes she left her religious icon on the bus and buys an expensive replacement. Their attempts to get on another bus belonging to the same company are unsuccessful and Maju is advised to walk into town to buy a new ticket.

Fernanda remembers visiting Yara’s house for the first time, where they talked about the difficulties of motherhood and had sex after Yara threw Fernanda’s phone away. Fernanda later retrieved her phone and returned home to a sleeping Cora.

In the present day, Maju and Cora walk toward town. They stop at a motel when Cora becomes exhausted. Fernanda recalls securing a yellow fever vaccine for Cora at a car dealership offering the scarce vaccine to customers and buying a car so that a poor woman’s grandchildren could also be vaccinated.

At the motel, Maju worries about Cora seeing adult content on television and about the police being contacted. Fernanda recalls an ayahuasca ceremony in the Amazon, during which she hallucinated a vision of a frightened Cora. Maju washes Cora and orders food. Cora tells Maju she loves her.

Fernanda continues her affair with Yara. At Cora’s birthday party, she leaves early and goes to Yara’s house where she discovers Yara with another woman. She is jealous and takes Cora home.

At the motel, Cora’s feet are injured, and she refuses her new name of Ana. She asks for her mother. Maju breaks her religious statue, panics, and worries she is having a heart attack. She decides that the damage to the statue is divine intervention trying to convince her to change course. She thinks about what would happen to Cora if she died and realizes that the life she can offer Cora is much more dangerous and unstable than the life of wealth and privilege she would live if Maju returns her to her parents. She recalls that Fernanda had planned to fire her, which originally motivated the kidnapping. Maju leaves the motel with Cora and waits for a bus. Fernanda then learns Cora and Maju are not at the farm, and she and Cacá report them missing to the police, realizing they do not know Maju’s full name or address.

When no bus arrives, Maju hitchhikes with a truck driver who agrees to take them back to São Paulo. Fernanda and Cacá search the city, and Fernanda briefly mistakes another child for Cora. Maju talks with the driver, Ednardo. After hearing a story about his past and searching his belongings while he is away, Maju decides that he seems trustworthy and continues the journey.

Fernanda and Cacá return home, and Fernanda searches Maju’s room. She reflects on how expensively she had furnished it for Maju. Then, she realizes that it was still used to house her own possessions instead of being entirely Maju's space. Fernanda and Cacá discuss the disappearance, get drunk, and do a tarot reading. Fernanda admits she only cares about what has happened to Cora. She is not worried about what has happened to Maju. She confesses her affair with Yara to Cacá.

The truck reaches São Paulo. Ednardo stops in a poor area, making Maju paranoid. However, he is stopping to shower. Fernanda tells Yara she will leave Cacá if Cora is not found.

Ednardo drops Maju and Cora at the apartment building. Maju wakes Cora and sends her back to the apartment building alone, telling her not to tell anyone where Maju is. She watches as the doorman lets Cora enter. Then, Maju turns away.