Ochazuke no Aji

"Ochazuke no aji"

Though also the title of a literary work  by  Mori Minoru, the subject of today's post, Ochazuke no aji, is an old movie, known in English as Flavor of Green Tea over Rice. (There are other translations, but that's the one IMBD uses). The first draft being censored, a rework of it was released in 1952. The plot? A marriage in crisis, plus a sub-plot concerning the couple's niece.

Quick History
It goes like this. In 1939, the director, Ozu Yasujirō, wrote a draft for a movie -- unless it was him and a man named Ikeda -- after he came back from Japan's front in China. (He'd had to be in the army as an infantry corporal since July 1937, on account of the Sino-Japanese War). The censors (there was a lot of censorship between 1931 and 1945) objected to it for it's lack of patriotism.

After all, the Motion Picture Law had been passed that year, which meant more censorship than before. Ozu received a "no go" for it in the February of 1940 -- unless it was sometime in 1938. Later a second draft was created either by Ozu and Kōgo Noda or by Noda... or something.  At any rate, Ozu was the director, and in 1952 it was filmed and released in Japan that October, on the 1st. The U.S. release happened in 1964.

Now for the plots.

The 1939 Plot
Be ready, this gets kinda scary (you'll see what I mean). So... there's this couple, their marriage was an arranged marriage. He's a simple things kinda guy, and a dedicated business man, while she's the opposite, up to date on fashion and also selfish. Her husband's existence causes in her soul the bored feeling.

Things get dramatic. The husband gets the draft notice, and is fatalistic about it, while the wife feels distinctly unhappy about it. The night before he's sent out, they have dinner together, where they have (you guessed it), ochazuke. But that's not quite the end of it: during this meal, the wife,  who finds her husband's fatalism irritating, asks if he doesn't want to die. He tells her that he thinks life is a gamble no matter where you are and that he does his best for where he works -- so I guess he has no regrets and does his best, kinda thing? Well, anyway, she starts to cry. What is this husband's response his wife's tears? He slaps her and calls her selfish. (Just wait, it gets scarier). The wife's response to that? She has an epiphany of happiness, and feels herself really loving him.
(Told ya.)

Now, just to clear up any confusion, apparently, the slap was to make her think of being a proper Japanese citizen, not a the slap of "I'm a man, so I don't have to be a decent human being, especially to my wife". Like that makes it any better.

But wait, there's an icky little cherry to go on top scary mess of a story: the last scene has the wife telling her friends about the dinner of violence -- and they say, Yep, that's what men are like!

Feel free to start breathing into a paper bag, if you need to.

So, why on earth was this uncomfortable piece of work not allowed? Officially, the censors said it was because the "couple" ate the wrong thing at the "last dinner together" scene -- though I saw one place say that this only a tradition concerning the movie, not an actual official reason. The censors said that the meal should have been sekihan (red beans and rice), a dish served at celebrations, and the dish that custom dictated was to be served as part of sending off a drafted person. So it wasn't patriotic enough. And it wasn't just that.

Oh no, the draft contained other shameful things such as not being serious enough.  And it mentioned customs and words that were from (gasp!) the Occident. These other two things, you see, were breaking the law, the 1937-1938 Home Ministry Code to be precise. 

The 1952 Plot

First, here's the movie's cast:

Shin Saburi as Mokichi Satake
Michiyo Kogure as Taeko Satake (Mokichi's wife)
Koji Tsuruta as Noboru
Chishu Ryu as Sadao Hirayama
Chikage Awajima as Aya Amamiya
Keiki Tsujima as Setsuko

And now, a brief (possibly incomplete) summary:

It goes like this (some parts may sound familiar by now). There's this well-off couple , right? (They have servants). They have no kids, and the both of them are in their middle years.

The husband, Mokichi, is an engineering company's executive, and is a nice man with simple tastes and of few words, who is also "uncultured" while at table. The wife, Taeko -- a selfish social climber -- finds herself bored with Mokichi, who she calls Dull-chan. Taeko, in her disdain towards Mokichi, even has a habit of lying to him, including lying about going to a spa with her friends and Setsuko, Mokichi's niece.

Watching aunty and her friends talk about their husbands, Setsuko decides that she doesn't want to go into an arranged marriage. Something that her mother has been working on. At some point Aunty Taeko is pressured (by Mokichi's family) to have Setsuko go into an arranged marriage, but Setsuko doesn't bow down -- she tells aunty that arranged marriages are medieval in a bad way, and uses aunty's dead marriage as an example. Setsuko even escapes from an o-miai, a meeting between two prospective marriage partners.

After the o-miai, Setsuko goes around with uncle Mokichi and a man with an office job, Noboru. It is with Noboru that (at some point, dunno when exactly) she visits the city, including a pachinko parlor with a regretful owner and a ramen shop, where they eat -- Noboru also has "low-class" tastes. (Random note: this movie is the first from Japan to use the word rāmen in its script).

When Taeko finds out Mokichi (who, it turns out, always could tell when Taeko was lying) is/was being complicit with Setsuko's unfilial desire to pick her own husband, she picks an argument with him. And then decides she wants to be by herself for a while.

This is, of course, when Mokichi receives the draft, to be immediately put in Uruguay so of course he can't tell her in person what's happening because she's gone off to be alone. But! The plane he gets on has to head back. Taeko is waiting for him at the house, and has spent time thinking. Together they figure out the kitchen and make ochazuke (Mokichi's habit of eating had been annoying to Taeko), each of them having said how much they do care about the other. Taeko realizes that her unassuming pleb of a husband has it right after all when it comes to living. Their marriage is saved.

Ochazuke no aji lasts for a total of either 115 or 116 minutes.  Watch out for a Jean Marais shout-out (I've actually seen him a few times in a 1946 rendition of Beauty and the Beast), and for a restaurant called Calorie --- if you happen to see Tokyo Chorus, it's in there too.

References:
Helping us with our homework every time there's a paper! The places I used:

"Historical Dictionary of Postwar Japan"; William D. Hoover; 2011

"The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years' War, 1931-1945"; Peter B. High; 2003

National Library of Australia: 1952, English, Japanese, Video, Captioned edition: Flavour of green tea over rice [motion picture] = Ochazuke no aji. 

Center of Japanese Studies Publications: "Ozu and the poetics of cinema"; David Bordwell; 1988

"The Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze"; George Solt; 2014

 "Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer"; Paul Schrader; 1972

"Ozu"; Donald Richie; 1974

"Eigagaku No Susume"; Mark Howard Nornes, Aaron Gerow (editors); 2001

"War, Occupation, and Creativity: Japan and East Asia, 1920-1960"; Marlene J. Mayo, J. Thomas Rimer, H. Eleanor Kerkham (editors); 2001

"Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga", Volume 1; Frenchy Lunning (editor); 2006

"I Do and I Don't: A History of Marriage in the Movies" Jeanine Basinger; 2012

"A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to DVDs and Videos"; Donald Richie; 2005

"Magill's Survey of Cinema, Foreign Language Films: Ete-Inn"; Frank Northern Magill; 1985

 "New York Magazine"; Oct 15, 1973

IMDB: Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice