It looks like a prototype version of My Neighbors the Yamadas or The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. In the 1960s scenes, the animation is simple, with lines not quite reaching the edges of frames and white space dominating the compositions. That emphasis on memory and nostalgia carries over into the animation. Longing for her older sister’s handbag, dealing with a first crush, trying pineapple for the first time - these small vignettes take on emotionally complex, often ironic dimensions from the twentysomething Taeko’s mature perspective. In this way, the story takes on a To Kill a Mockingbird dimension - every event from her youth is delivered through a lens that’s sometimes tragic, sometimes fondly reminiscing. (Yoko Honna voices the young Taeko, Miki Imai the elder.) While she takes a train out to Yamagata Prefecture to pick safflower with some distant family members and friends, her mind wanders back to her fifth-grade self, who is still fresh in her mind. Takahata found it difficult to wrestle the episodic source manga into a film structure, so he invented a frame narrative for the story - an older Taeko, in 1982, has secured a cushy job, but she hasn’t let go of a dream from her youth of living a quiet agrarian life in the countryside. In Japanese, the title of Only Yesterday actually translates to something like “Memories, Plip-Plop.” It’s a coming-of-age tale about a fifth-grade girl, Taeko, growing up in 1966. Only Yesterday wasn’t released to the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany until 2006, and a fully dubbed version didn’t debut in the United States until 2016. The film was released in 1991, the pre– Spirited Away days, when most of the studio’s films took years, sometimes decades, to reach international audiences. Perhaps that’s why many of his films are deeper cuts that haven’t enjoyed the same kind of international releases and plaudits as Miyazaki’s. The most popular Miyazaki films have global appeal, while Takahata’s are quintessentially Japanese. Where Miyazaki comes from an animator’s background, Takahata comes from a writer’s (he studied French literature in college). His films are often more experimental and realistic than Miyazaki’s, eschewing his fellow filmmaker’s broader fantasy elements in favor of naturalistic character pieces. (For his slow pace, Miyazaki nicknamed him “Paku-san,” meaning “little muncher.”) Takahata died in 2018.Įvery time the studio turned a major profit, Takahata was there to ground it, to say, “Well, that’s nice, let me put this money toward an extremely niche film that will be impossible to market internationally.” That’s how we got raccoons with enormous magical testicles in Pom Poko and a laboriously animated, super-expensive comic strip adaptation in My Neighbors the Yamadas. He only made five movies with the studio, with his final film being The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. Despite co-founding the studio with producer Toshio Suzuki and director Hayao Miyazaki, Takahata doesn’t get nearly the same recognition or acclaim. Only Yesterday marks writer-director Isao Takahata’s second outing with Studio Ghibli, after Grave of the Fireflies three years earlier. It’s a film unlike any other animated project before or since. Thirty years on, Only Yesterday stands out as a mature, sophisticated gem among Studio Ghibli’s catalog, a poignant, thoughtful film about growing up, getting old, and the heavy burden of memory. Only Yesterday is half a coming-of-age story and half a drama about the role of women in Japanese society - which is to say, it’s not their most accessible work. But from the same studio that produced one larger-than-life fantasy after another, the film is a masterpiece buried on Ghibli’s B-side, known only to die-hard fans of the studio. Released July 20, 1991, Only Yesterday was the highest-grossing Japanese picture of its year. It’s one of the most magical moments in Studio Ghibli’s entire oeuvre. There’s a subtle vibrance to the scene and a real, tangible elegance to the dialogue. Rain falls softly on the roof, and the windshield wipers keep the rhythm. Only Yesterday has none of those things, yet its climax is just as profound as the studio’s most beloved films: Two people in love, sitting in a car in the middle of the night, chat about a boy the woman used to know in school. Studio Ghibli rode to success on the backs of fantasies and epics, forest spirits and mystical bathhouses, fire-bombings, and world wars. There’s a scene toward the end of Only Yesterday that sings.
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