Only Yesterday (1991)
★★½ — Only Yesterday (1991)
Only Yesterday arrives with the considerable weight of Studio Ghibli's reputation behind it, though it occupies a rather different corner of that studio's catalogue than the fantastical worlds most audiences associate with the name. Released in Japan in 1991, the film is based on a manga by Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone, and it trades entirely in the mundane and the personal rather than in spirits, curses or flying machines. The story follows Taeko, a 27-year-old Tokyo office worker who takes a working holiday in rural Yamagata to help with the safflower harvest, and who finds herself travelling backwards in memory to her fifth-grade self in 1966. Those two timelines weave through each other across the film's 119-minute running time, one rooted in the quiet rhythms of countryside life, the other in the small social dramas of a Tokyo primary school classroom. It is, without question, one of the more unusual productions to come out of Ghibli's early years, aimed squarely at adult women in a way that set it apart from almost everything else the studio had released up to that point.
The film was directed by Isao Takahata, who had already made his mark on Ghibli with the harrowing wartime drama Grave of the Fireflies three years earlier. Where that film was raw and devastating, Only Yesterday is measured and contemplative, and the two sit at opposite poles of what Takahata was capable of. Produced jointly by Studio Ghibli, Tokuma Shoten and Nippon Television Network Corporation, the film became a significant commercial success in Japan on its original release, though Western audiences had to wait decades for a proper theatrical distribution. The voice cast in the original Japanese version is led by Miki Imai as the adult Taeko and Yoko Honna as her childhood counterpart, with Toshiro Yanagiba as Toshio, the farmer she grows close to during her time in the countryside. Yorie Yamashita and Yuki Minowa round out the principal cast. The animation style is notably softer and more naturalistic than the studio's more celebrated fantasy pictures, with the 1966 sequences rendered in a warmer, slightly diffused palette that gives them the quality of half-remembered photographs. For fans of thoughtful, non-genre animation, it sits comfortably alongside films such as No Dogs or Italians Allowed and Fantastic Planet as a reminder of how much animated cinema can do when it steps away from conventional storytelling structures.
A 27 year old reminiscing about being 10 Dont get me wrong, its typical Studio Ghibli in that the animation and soundtrack are some of the best you're likely to see. Where it falls away a little for me is the story. I'm clearly not the target audience though being a man watching a woman's journey through life. As the father of a 10 year old girl it was certainly interesting. I think it's important to understand Japanese culture (at least in the 60s n 70s when this was set) but nevertheless, it's just a slow burning afternoon cup of tea type film Not too good, nothing bad. Just a bit middle of the road.
I think that "cup of tea" description is probably the most honest way I can put it, and I stand by it. There is craft here that is hard to argue with, and for the right viewer at the right moment it probably lands much harder than it did for me. But a film can be well made and still leave you a little cold, and that is more or less where I ended up. If the slower, more introspective end of Japanese cinema is something you want to explore further, I have also spent time with Blue, which comes from the same country and a similar era and has its own quietly considered approach to character. Only Yesterday is worth your time if you know what you are walking into, but go in expecting something gentle and unhurried rather than a story that grabs you by the collar. Sometimes a film just is what it is.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1991 | Watched: 2025-05-04
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Only Yesterday (1991) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Isao Takahata: Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
More from Japan: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Blue (1993) · The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
