Only Yesterday (1991 film)

Did You Know?

• The film had an advertisement tie-in with the tomato sauce brand Kagome, and children's lunch sets were launched upon its release.
• A live-action special serving as a continuation debuted in Japan in 2021, following a 64-year-old Taeko with her daughter and granddaughter.
• The film's English-language dub, released in 2016, featured voices by Daisy Ridley, Dev Patel, Alison Fernandez, Laura Bailey, and Ashley Eckstein.

Plot

In 1982, Taeko Okajima, an unmarried office worker in Tokyo, decides to visit her eldest sister Nanako's in-laws in Yamagata to help with the safflower harvest. During the overnight sleeper train journey, she begins recalling memories of herself as a ten-year-old schoolgirl in 1966, including her first crush, her family's experience with an unripe pineapple, and her indirect encounter with puberty. Upon arrival, she is met by Toshio, her brother-in-law's second cousin, who moved from the city to become a farmer.

Taeko shares her memories with her relatives, including a story about wanting a purse as a child, which leads to a conflict with her father. She also recalls struggling with fractions in school and a failed attempt to pursue acting. Through conversations with Toshio, she reflects on how her past experiences shape her present self, and she comes to appreciate the rural landscape and its connection to her nostalgia.

Production

The film is based on a manga by Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone, but only the scenes set in 1966 with the ten-year-old Taeko are drawn from that source. Takahata invented the framing narrative of the adult Taeko's countryside journey and romance with Toshio to adapt the episodic manga into a feature film. During production, tensions arose between Takahata and producer Hayao Miyazaki, who complained about missed deadlines, leading to the cancellation of planned spring screenings. The film's animation director was Yoshifumi Kondo. To meet staffing needs, Studio Ghibli placed advertisements in Animage. Miyazaki proposed changes to the studio's staffing model, introducing full-time employment and fixed salaries in November 1990, which doubled production costs. This required a constant production stream, prompting Miyazaki to begin work on Porco Rosso before Only Yesterday was finished.

Themes

The film presents Taeko's holiday as a journey of remembrance that blends her childhood memories with her present self, drawing on a tradition of live-action family movies in classic Japanese cinema. Susan Napier describes Only Yesterday as a celebration of youth, innocence, and nostalgia for a disappearing past, categorizing it as an elegiac anime. The contrast between city and country reflects Taeko's nostalgia and different visions of growing up in a changing Japan, symbolized by her train journeys.

The flashback sequences use a softer color palette with faded edges, while the 1980s scenes employ precise lines, an aesthetic separation that encourages reflective reexamination of memories. The film's conservative structure embodies a perspective Napier calls quintessentially Japanese. Nostalgic elements from the 1960s are rendered wistful by Taeko's struggle to come to terms with her past self, and the ambiguous conclusion leaves her dreams unfulfilled, integrating her past into her renewed self.

Music

Takahata commissioned an image album from Katsu Hoshi, released in December 1990, and repurposed some songs for the film's soundtrack, which also includes snippets from Japanese rock bands, motifs from Schubert and Brahms, and international folk music. Takahata wrote his own translation of the pop song 'The Rose,' performed by enka singer Harumi Miyako. He planned three pillars of music: diegetic and non-diegetic snippets for flashbacks, Eastern European folk music (including Bulgarian Women's Chorus and a Romanian folk song with nai played by Gheorghe Zamfir), and introspective piano and string compositions for scenes of self-examination.

The repeated Eastern European theme draws parallels with Japanese rural life, with Hungarian music like Brahms' 'Hungarian Dance No. 5' and performances by Sebestyén Márta & Muzsikás. Bulgarian folk songs such as 'Dilmano, Dilbero' and 'Malka Moma Dvori Mete' appear during field scenes. Kunio Hara argues that Takahata's use of music invites reflection on memory and the passage of time.