The film is notable for its use of the "tatami-mat" shot, in which the camera height is low and remains largely static throughout.
Because of Yasujirô Ozu's style of shooting at eye-level from the floor, all the sets had to be constructed with ceilings.
Although made in the early 1950s alongside many other Japanese films now considered classics (e.g., Rashomon - Das Lustwäldchen (1950), Ugetsu - Erzählungen unter dem Regenmond (1953), and Das Höllentor (1953)), this didn't receive U.S. release until 1964, by which time Yasujirô Ozu was already dead.
The original negative was lost soon after the film was completed, due to a fire at the vault of the lab in Yokohama city. The film had to be released using prints made from a dupe protective negative.
Yasujirô Ozu and his longtime collaborator Kôgo Noda spent 103 days at a country inn in Chigasaka working on the screenplay. After that, shooting and editing advanced extremely quickly, meaning the film was in production for a total of four months.
Yasujirô Ozu: [movie posters] Ozu pays tribute to his cinematic influences by putting all kinds of film posters all over the wall in his films. In this movie, there are posters in Noriko's workplace (at around 36 mins), Shige's hairdressing salon (at around 57 mins), and finally in the bar (at around 1hr 12 mins). Sadly, these films are hard to identify because the posters are obscured by the parts of the background.