{ "id": "ep1fnee1q3", "slug": "the-taste-of-tea", "title": "The Taste of Tea (茶の味)", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance", "label": "Comedy and romantic films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-2003-to-2004", "label": "Comedies of 2003 to 2004", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-2003-to-2004" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-2003-to-2004.alpha-m-to-y", "label": "Titles M to Y", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-2003-to-2004.alpha-m-to-y" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance", "label": "Asia (other) · 2001 to 2020: Comedy and romantic films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance", "path": [ { "id": "geo.asia", "label": "Asia (other)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t2001", "label": "Asia (other) · 2001 to 2020", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t2001" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t2001.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t2001.culture" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance", "label": "Comedy and romantic films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance" } ] } ], "excerpt": "The Taste of Tea (茶の味, Cha no Aji) is Katsuhito Ishii's 2003 Japanese comedy-drama about the eccentric Haruno family, which opened the 2004 Cannes Directors' Fortnight and holds a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.", "snippet": "The Taste of Tea (茶の味, Cha no Aji) is Katsuhito Ishii's 2003 Japanese comedy-drama about the eccentric Haruno family, which opened the 2004 Cannes Directors' Fortnight and holds a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-2003-to-2004.alpha-m-to-y", "markdown": "# The Taste of Tea (茶の味)\n\n**The Taste of Tea** (茶の味, *Cha no Aji*) is a 2003 Japanese comedy-drama directed, written, and edited by Katsuhito Ishii, following the everyday lives of the eccentric Haruno family in a small mountain town north of Tokyo. Made three years after his previous feature, it opened the Directors' Fortnight at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and has since become one of the best-reviewed Japanese films of its period, with a 100% score on the Rotten Tomatoes critics' aggregate and a Metascore of 77.[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/175) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_taste_of_tea) • [3](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-taste-of-tea/critic-reviews/)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Original title / director | 茶の味 (*Cha no Aji*), directed, written, and edited by Katsuhito Ishii[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/175) |\n| Production and release | Made in 2003; Japanese theatrical release July 17, 2004; distributed by Klockworx and Rentrak Japan[4](https://eiga.com/movie/41030/) |\n| Runtime and format | 143 minutes, color, 35mm[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/175) |\n| Festival premiere | Opening film of the Directors' Fortnight at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/175) |\n| Principal cast | Maya Banno (Sachiko), Takahiro Sato (Hajime), Tadanobu Asano (uncle Ayano), Satomi Tezuka (Yoshiko), Tatsuya Gashuin (grandfather Akira), Tomokazu Miura (Nobuo), Anna Tsuchiya (Aoi)[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/175) • [5](https://klockworx.com/movies/18818/) |\n| Key crew | Music by Little Tempo; animation director Ken Koike of Madhouse; producers Kazuto Takida and Kazutoshi Wadakura[5](https://klockworx.com/movies/18818/) |\n| Critical standing | 100% Tomatometer from 22 reviews and 87% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes; Metascore 77 (generally favorable)[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_taste_of_tea) • [3](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-taste-of-tea/critic-reviews/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Story and structure\n\nThe film follows the Haruno family, who live together in a small town in the mountains, each member carrying a private worry that the film treats in its own episodic thread.[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/175) The teenage son Hajime is distraught when the girl he secretly loves transfers schools, then falls for a new transfer student, Aoi ([Anna Tsuchiya](https://www.edgepedia.org/anna-tsuchiya)). His younger sister Sachiko, a first-year elementary school student, is troubled by a giant doppelganger of herself that appears unbidden in the yard and the school grounds and silently looks down at her.[4](https://eiga.com/movie/41030/) The mother, Yoshiko, a former animator, struggles to return to animation work under the guidance of the eccentric grandfather Akira, while her husband Nobuo, a hypnotherapist in the countryside practice, feels left behind. The uncle Ayano, a music producer, returns home from Tokyo and cannot bring himself to cross a long bridge to congratulate the former girlfriend who is about to marry.[4](https://eiga.com/movie/41030/) • [5](https://klockworx.com/movies/18818/)\n\nThe film has no conventional dramatic engine. As the Japanese database Eiga.com notes in its viewer commentary, unlike the usual pattern in which a trouble or trigger drives the story forward, *The Taste of Tea* deliberately lacks one, and that absence is part of its appeal.[4](https://eiga.com/movie/41030/) The critic Adrian Martin describes it as stuffed with digressions and flashbacks that always return to the familiar rhythms and rituals of the Haruno family's daily life, with each family member given a plot thread of their own across the 143 minutes.[6](https://www.adrianmartinfilmcritic.com/reviews/t/taste_of_tea.html) Recurring set pieces include a woman assaulting her boss, a trio performing a song built on the single repeated word \"mountain,\" and an anime team providing improvised vocal sound effects over rough footage of their latest production.[6](https://www.adrianmartinfilmcritic.com/reviews/t/taste_of_tea.html)\n\n## Style and influences\n\nIshii mixes live action with animation and graphic effects throughout. The animation director was Ken Koike of the studio Madhouse, and the film weaves in anime sequences and CG imagery against the rural landscape.[5](https://klockworx.com/movies/18818/) • [4](https://eiga.com/movie/41030/) Screen Daily's review describes the film's own billing as a fusion of the classical humanist dramas of Yasujiro Ozu with the manga-shaped sensibility of a director who had worked on the animation sequence in [Quentin Tarantino](https://www.edgepedia.org/quentin-tarantino)'s *Kill Bill: Vol. 1*, though the reviewer judges it closer to a kitchen-sink film that throws in an anime sequence, a musical number, sadistic slapstick, and absurdist comedy.[7](https://www.screendaily.com/the-taste-of-tea-cha-no-aji/4019873.article)\n\nThe surreal elements are treated as ordinary facts of the family's world. The scholar Ikuho Amano, writing in the journal *Asian Cinema*, characterizes the film as an attempt to visualize nonsensical dreams while presenting the surface of a gentle, even traditional [Japanese family](https://www.edgepedia.org/japanese-family), and connects its offbeat tone to the widespread Japanese desire for *iyashi*, or healing, that grew after the end of the Bubble Economy in the mid-1990s.[8](https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/ac.21.1.215_5) Some English-language commentators have reached for grander comparisons: the film has been described as a psychedelic version of [Ingmar Bergman](https://www.edgepedia.org/ingmar-bergman)'s *[Fanny and Alexander](https://www.edgepedia.org/fanny-and-alexander)*, a label the Wimbledon Film Club argues undersells its humor and warmth.[9](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-taste-of-tea/details/) • [10](https://wimbledonfilmclub.co.uk/the-taste-of-tea/)\n\n## Director and production context\n\n**Katsuhito Ishii** (born 1966, Niigata Prefecture) made his feature debut with *Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl* (1998) and followed it with *Party 7* (2000), both stylized, offbeat crime films.[6](https://www.adrianmartinfilmcritic.com/reviews/t/taste_of_tea.html) • [11](https://www.dgj.or.jp/i-17/) *The Taste of Tea* was his third feature and a deliberate change of direction. In a 2004 interview he said he had wanted to make a family drama since working on *Shark Skin Man*, had doubted the genre suited him, and began building the story from an idea about a grandfather who endlessly teases his grandchild, expanding it by asking what kind of person the grandfather was, what the grandchild thought, and what the mother did for work.[12](https://www.cinematoday.jp/interview/A0000672) He also said the title was fixed from the early stages of production; he briefly considered a clearer title, *Spring Worries*, but rejected it as too obvious, keeping *The Taste of Tea* partly because the family drinks tea together and partly because he simply likes tea.[12](https://www.cinematoday.jp/interview/A0000672)\n\nThe film was produced by Kazuto Takida and Kazutoshi Wadakura, with companies including Grasshoppa, The Klockworx, and Rentrak Japan among the production and distribution credits.[5](https://klockworx.com/movies/18818/) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_taste_of_tea) At Cannes 2004, where it opened the Directors' Fortnight, the screening reportedly received a standing ovation.[13](https://topics.cinematopics.com/archives/15988)\n\n## Reception\n\nCritical response has been strongly positive and durable. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100% Tomatometer from 22 reviews and an 87% audience score from more than 1,000 ratings; on Metacritic it scores 77, with all five sampled reviews positive, led by a 90 from the Chicago Reader, which called it \"weird but cool\" yet remarkably touching, and an 88 from the [Chicago Tribune](https://www.edgepedia.org/chicago-tribune), which named it the most charming comedy in town.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_taste_of_tea) • [3](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-taste-of-tea/critic-reviews/) The most common reservation is length: the Seattle Times reviewer wrote that the film could easily lose a half hour, and the [New York Post](https://www.edgepedia.org/new-york-post) called it a tad too long while still finding it touching and funny.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_taste_of_tea) • [3](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-taste-of-tea/critic-reviews/)\n\nThe film won festival recognition after Cannes, including the Audience Award at the Neuchatel International Fantasy Film Festival and the Jury Award at Puchon, and later the Audience Award at the 2005 New York Asian Film Festival.[7](https://www.screendaily.com/the-taste-of-tea-cha-no-aji/4019873.article) • [10](https://wimbledonfilmclub.co.uk/the-taste-of-tea/) Screen Daily judged it a difficult commercial proposition outside Japan, a prediction borne out by its modest canonical presence: the Cinegraph aggregate gives its long-term presence in canonical film lists a low 2.2 against a critics' score of 8.8.[7](https://www.screendaily.com/the-taste-of-tea-cha-no-aji/4019873.article) • [14](https://cinegraph.org/movies/the-taste-of-tea-2004/legacy)\n\n## Restoration and re-release\n\nThe film has had a sustained afterlife in home video and revival screenings. A new-master Blu-ray supervised by Ishii himself was released in Japan on July 3, 2024, priced at ¥5,720, with extensive extras including the 151-minute companion piece *The Taste of Tea: This Color and That Shape* and a 91-minute making-of documentary.[5](https://klockworx.com/movies/18818/) Film Movement released a director-supervised HD restoration in US theaters on May 8, 2026, with home video to follow on September 25, 2026.[15](https://filmmovement.com/the-taste-of-tea) Reviewers of the restoration note that the cleaner presentation reveals how much visual care was built into footage that once played as shaggy, and that the film's patience and refusal to chase narrative payoff remain its defining traits.[16](https://www.cinedump.com/reviews/2026/4/27/the-taste-of-tea)\n\n## References\n\n1. [The Taste of Tea (茶の味), Japanese Film Database (JFDB)](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/175)\n2. [The Taste of Tea, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_taste_of_tea)\n3. [The Taste of Tea critic reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-taste-of-tea/critic-reviews/)\n4. [茶の味：作品情報・キャスト・あらすじ, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/41030/)\n5. [茶の味, 株式会社クロックワークス (THE KLOCKWORX)](https://klockworx.com/movies/18818/)\n6. [Adrian Martin, review of The Taste of Tea (2005)](https://www.adrianmartinfilmcritic.com/reviews/t/taste_of_tea.html)\n7. [Allan Hunter, The Taste of Tea (Cha No Aji) review, Screen Daily (2004)](https://www.screendaily.com/the-taste-of-tea-cha-no-aji/4019873.article)\n8. [Ikuho Amano, Film review: The Taste of Tea (2004), Asian Cinema 21.1 (2010)](https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/ac.21.1.215_5)\n9. [The Taste of Tea details, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-taste-of-tea/details/)\n10. [The Taste of Tea, Wimbledon Film Club](https://wimbledonfilmclub.co.uk/the-taste-of-tea/)\n11. [石井克人, 日本映画監督協会 (Directors Guild of Japan)](https://www.dgj.or.jp/i-17/)\n12. [『茶の味』石井克人監督独占インタビュー, シネマトゥデイ (2004)](https://www.cinematoday.jp/interview/A0000672)\n13. [実景は面白い！『茶の味』石井克人監督インタビュー, CINEMATOPICS (2004)](https://topics.cinematopics.com/archives/15988)\n14. [The Taste of Tea legacy, Cinegraph](https://cinegraph.org/movies/the-taste-of-tea-2004/legacy)\n15. [The Taste of Tea (Theatrical), Film Movement](https://filmmovement.com/the-taste-of-tea)\n16. [Warm, Strange, and Patient: Revisiting The Taste of Tea, CineDump (2026)](https://www.cinedump.com/reviews/2026/4/27/the-taste-of-tea)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2003 to 2004 › Titles M to Y*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-taste-of-tea", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-taste-of-tea.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"The Taste of Tea (茶の味)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-taste-of-tea. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[The Taste of Tea (茶の味)](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-taste-of-tea)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/the-taste-of-tea](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-taste-of-tea). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"The Taste of Tea (茶の味)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-taste-of-tea. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "The Taste of Tea is Katsuhito Ishii's 2003 Japanese comedy-drama about the eccentric Haruno family, which opened the 2004 Cannes Directors' Fortnight and holds a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score." }