Only Yesterday
Composite Score: 85.23
Starring: Miki Imai/Daisy Ridley, Tohsirô Yanagiba/Dev Patel, Yoko Honna/Alison Fernandez, Mayumi Izuka/Hope Levy, Yuuki Masuda/Gianella Thielmann, Michie Terada/Grey Griffin, and Masahiro Ito/Matthew Yang King
Director: Isao Takahata
Writer: Isao Takahata
Genres: Animation, Drama, Romance, Coming of Age
MPAA Rating: PG for thematic elements, some rude behavior, and smoking
Box Office: $545,825 worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Only Yesterday is Isao Takahata’s film adaptation of the manga of the same name by Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone about a young woman’s memories of her life as a fifth grader. The film follows Taeko – a 27-year-old office worker from Tokyo – as she vacations to the Japanese countryside to work in the fields and reminisces on her time as a schoolgirl in the 1960s. It bounces back and forth between the “present day” narrative about Taeko in rural Japan and her budding relationship with peasant farmer Toshio and the “past” narrative of Taeko’s coming-of-age in the fifth grade and her formative experiences that all connect back to her present situation. Though not adapted into English until 2016, the film was widely successful in Japan on its initial release in 1991. It’s discussion of the “controversial” topic of periods kept it from receiving full U.S. circulation until recently, but many consider it to be a solid follow-up to Takahata’s masterpiece Grave of the Fireflies, again capturing the tenderness of youth and the maturity that young people are capable of exhibiting, offering learning opportunities to their older counterparts.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
Takahata’s film succeeds as a simple and artistic depiction of how we never fully leave our younger selves behind, but for all its tenderness and rumination on human development, Only Yesterday might be too simple for its own good. Taeko’s development in the film happens mostly in her flashbacks, giving her “present” character a sense of being stuck as an adolescent in a woman’s body, and most of her opportunities for development or processing of past traumas and experiences end up avoided or addressed in yet another flashback. While we get this romantic drama playing out in the present, there’s no real indication that Taeko has reached a point of maturity where she can fully engage with the push and pull of an adult romantic relationship because the only major points of maturing that we see her undergo happened sixteen years ago in the narrative. I think the film’s broader message about the impact of childhood on adulthood still works, but I’m not fully sold on the narrative that forms the film’s backbone.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
Minor character issues aside, Only Yesterday absolutely captures the magic of growing up that happens in those early days of adolescence and communicates their continued impact in creative fashion. The exploration of Taeko’s childhood – first crushes, classes about puberty, relationships with her parents and sisters, learning to process the world with a larger perspective than her own, seeking validation through belonging to a group, and so on – feel so real, as Takahata adapts the stories of the manga onto the screen. The style that showcases everything as memory encroaching upon reality only serves to elevate that sense of realness, mimicking our own perceptions of our memories constantly flavoring our everyday lives. Taeko might dwell more heavily on it than your average young adult, but her memory also goes beyond a sense of nostalgia to a place of self-discovery and understanding that comes from knowing your younger self and how that person impacts and carries over into who you are today. It’s one of the better examples of this in cinema mainly because it involves only minor traumas, if any – showing that it’s not just these big negative events that make us who we are, but the everyday mundane things that we rarely even think about that shape us well into adulthood.
Takahata’s examination of the ways that our childhoods (good, bad, and average) are inseparable from our adult lives elevates the sometimes-simplistic narrative of Only Yesterday and makes it into something great, worthy of mention among the greats. Its romance arc might be a bit frustrating at points, but the film’s broader message and themes more than make up for that. You can currently stream this film on Max if you’re looking to check it out soon.
