Ozu shot the film without his usual staff from Shochiku. Instead Toho provided Ozu with their top talent with such as Kurosawa's cinematographer Asakazu Nakai and Naruse's chief lighting technician Chôshirô Ishii. This results in the film having a distinct feel and unique look from the rest of Ozu's works.
The last of six collaborations between Yasujiro Ozu and Setsuko Hara.
As this was the only film Ozu made at Toho, several of Toho's top actors took the opportunity to work with the director. This included actors like Keiju Kobayashi known for his role in samurai films by Hiroshi Inagaki and Akira Kurosawa. The film also features actors from Toho's popular genre films such as Akira Takarada and Yû Fujiki, who are best known for the roles in Toho's Godzilla series. The film also features Reiko Dan a regular in films from Mikio Naruse and Kurosawa as well as Michiyo Aratama known for her work with Masaki Kobayashi.
This is Ozu's first and only film made at Toho studios. Setsuko Hara and Yôko Tsukasa were under contract at Toho and in order for Ozu to cast them in his prior film Late Autumn (1960), he agreed to make a film for Toho in exchange.
Working with new actors, Ozu found actors Keiju Kobayashi, Yu Fujiki, Reiko Dan to his liking. However, Ozu found it a bit for difficult to work with actors such as Hisaya Morishige, who were known for ad-libbing.
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