the central event of "late spring" is the marriage of the heroine to a man she has met only once through a single arranged meeting. this immediately presented a problem for the censors of the american occupation. according to film scholar kyoko hirano, these officials "considered feudalistic the japanese custom of arranged meetings for prospective marriage partners, "miai", because the custom seemed to them to downgrade the importance of the individual." hirano notes that, had this policy against showing arranged marriages onscreen been rigidly enforced, "late spring" could never have been made. in the original synopsis (which the filmmakers were required to submit to the censorship before production could be approved), noriko’s decision to marry was presented as a collective family decision, not an individual choice, and the censors apparently rejected this.