Sumi, a divorced Japanese woman, and James, an African American GI, meet in post-World War II Japan, fall in love, and marry. Nearly four decades later, now living in a quiet Los Angeles suburb, their seemingly durable marriage, tempered by years of fighting prejudice together, is threatened when Sumi decides James must move out of their house and begin dating her. More than a study of clashing cultures, Yohen is an intimately observed, poetically resonant story of two longtime partners who discover that the person one perceives in a new culture is not necessarily the person "left behind" in one's own.