The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice
The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.
From the archive
One of the ineffably lovely domestic sagas made by Yasujiro Ozu at the height of his mastery, The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice is a sublimely piercing portrait of a marriage coming quietly undone. Secrets and deceptions strain the already tenuous relationship of a childless, middle-aged couple, as the wife’s city-bred sophistication bumps up against the husband’s small-town simplicity, and a generational sea change—in the form of her headstrong, modern niece—sweeps over their household. The director’s abiding concern with family dynamics receives one of its most spirited treatments, with a wry, tender humor and buoyant expansiveness that moves the action from the home into the baseball stadiums, pachinko parlors, and ramen shops of postwar Tokyo.
Why this is free to watch
The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952) is hosted by the Internet Archive as a public-domain or openly licensed work, which means its copyright has expired, lapsed, or was released by the rights holder. No signup, no payment and no advertising interrupts playback. Nitrate streams the file directly from the Archive and hosts no video itself.
- Director
- Yasujirō Ozu
- Starring
- Shin Saburi, Michiyo Kogure, Koji Tsuruta, Chikage Awashima, Keiko Tsushima, Eijirō Yanagi, Kuniko Miyake, Kōji Shitara
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