Only Yesterday (1991 film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Only Yesterday is a 1991 Japanese animated drama film written and directed by Isao Takahata, based on the manga of the same title by Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone. Toshio Suzuki produced the film and Studio Ghibli provided the animation. It was released on July 20, 1991. The ending theme song Template:Nihongo4 is a Japanese translation of Amanda McBroom's composition "The Rose".
Only Yesterday explores a genre traditionally thought to be outside the realm of animated subjects: a realistic drama written for adults, particularly women. The film was a surprise box office success, attracting a large adult audience of all genders and becoming the highest-grossing Japanese film of the year in the country. It was also well received by critics, with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
To celebrate its 25th anniversary, GKIDS released the film for the first time in an English-language format on February 26, 2016, featuring voices from Star Wars actors Daisy Ridley & Ashley Eckstein and Academy Award nominee Dev Patel.
Plot
In 1982, Taeko is 27 years old, unmarried, has lived her whole life in Tokyo and now works at a company there. She decides to take another trip to visit the family of the elder brother of her brother-in-law in the rural countryside to help with the safflower harvest and get away from city life. While traveling at night on a sleeper train to Yamagata, she begins to recall memories of herself as a schoolgirl in 1966, and her intense desire to go on holiday like her classmates, all of whom have family outside of the big city.
At the arrival train station, she is surprised to find out that her brother in law's second cousin Toshio, whom she barely knows, is the one who came to pick her up. During her stay in Yamagata, she finds herself increasingly nostalgic and wistful for her childhood self, while simultaneously wrestling with adult issues of career and love. The trip dredges up forgotten memories (not all of them good ones) — the first stirrings of childish romance, puberty and growing up, the frustrations of math and boys. In lyrical switches between the present and the past, Taeko wonders if she has been true to the dreams of her childhood self. In doing so, she begins to realize that Toshio has helped her along the way. Finally, Taeko faces her own true self, how she views the world and the people around her. Taeko chooses to stay in the countryside instead of returning to Tokyo. It is implied that she and Toshio begin a relationship.
See also
- Whisper of the Heart and From Up on Poppy Hill, 1995 and 2011 Japanese animated drama films with similar stories, also from Studio Ghibli.
- Ocean Waves, a 1993 Japanese animated TV film, also from Studio Ghibli.
- Japan, Our Homeland
- Mai Mai Miracle
