Only Yesterday: rural reflections
Looking out across verdant Yamagata Prefecture countryside, two twenty-somethings reflect on the shape of the land. Taeko lives in Tokyo and works in an office: to her, this vista represents the anthesis of urban life. Toshio, on the other hand, came to live and work on his family’s farm after leaving the city. He points out how mankind and nature ‘evolve together, and… created this scenery’ :
Toshio: City people see the trees and rivers and are grateful for “nature”. But everything you see here is made by man.
Taeko: By man?
Toshio: Farmers.
Taeko: That wood?
Toshio: Yes.
Taeko: Those trees?
Toshio: Yes.
Taeko: That stream?
Toshio: Yes. Every bit has its history, not just the fields and rice paddies.
This is a scene from Only Yesterday, director Isao Takahata’s second film under Studio Ghibli, the famed animation house he started with Hayao Miyazaki in 1985. An adaption of Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone’s eponymous manga, the film nonetheless differs from its source material. While the manga focuses on Taeko as an 10-year-old, the film explores her adult life. A visit to the countryside makes her reflect on her childhood, while she is introduced to her brother-in-law’s second cousin Toshio.
These memories, which reference the visual style of the manga, feel disjointed at first, seemingly dropping us into random events: the first time she tries a pineapple, her standout role in school play, or struggle with fractions that leads her mother to worry that she isn’t normal. Then again, memories tend to be disjointed: there’s something naturalistic about the way Taeko recalls these moments which makes the film more like a adult drama. It was partly for this reason that Only Yesterday took longer to reach Western audiences than other Ghibli films at the time (think: Totoro), which were easier to market to a family audience.
Ghibli’s films are known for their vibrancy, but Only Yesterday takes a different approach. The first time I watched it nothing much stood out to me — I had been captivated by Miyazaki’s vibrant creations, by Takahata’s racoon-filled Pom Poko, and Charlie-Brown-esque My Neighbours the Yamadas. Only Yesterday makes sense as you get older. Now that I’m the same age as the main characters I can understand both the confusion of childhood, and the dillusionment of adulthood, without knowing, just like the protagonist, where exactly I’m headed.
Takahata’s films often have a precise attention to detail and psychological realism, characteristics which are sometimes attributed to his creative partner, Miyazaki. The Ghibli animator Yasuo Ōtsuka claimed that Miyazaki would only be interested in comic book characters if it wasn’t for Takahata’s influence. Even if this is an exaggeration, it highlights Takahata’s key role in the studio and as masterful as Miyazaki is, it’s hard to imagine him creating a film as understated as Only Yesterday. Rather than visual magic and spectacle, the film is full of quiet reflectiveness.
Taeko’s character is, herself, unassuming. She is a reliable worker, somebody who is agreeable, even if she hasn’t settled down yet. By contrast, as the youngest of three sisters, the young Taeko is needy and insecure. Taeko doesn’t always recall her childhood with nostalgia — her father is emotionally distant and growing up is a sometimes uncomfortable, dissonant experience.
A key theme in the film is the contrast between rural and urban life, modernity and traditionalism. The countryside, somewhat mythical for the young Taeko, retains it allure for her as an adult. At the beginning of the film she uses her ten day holiday to visit her sister’s in-laws, who are organic farmers, and helps them out with picking safflower used for rouge and red dye. Though this intended as a working holiday, she gradually considers spending her life like this, far away from the senseless noise and bustle of Tokyo. Is this just a case of the grass is always greener? Taeko herself thinks so at first, imagining the resentment the safflower-picking girls would have felt towards those who lived glamorous lives in Tokyo.
Like other Ghibli films, particularly Takahata’s Pom Poko (1994), Only Yesterday has strong ecological undercurrents, presenting the balance between human societies and the natural world as fragile. But while the later film had a sobering message about the destruction of nature and its effect on wildlife, Only Yesterday romanticizes the rural lifestyle, and emphasises the honest, yet unstable, work of farmers. ‘As things go, Japanese farming might just collapse, all of a sudden, one day’ remarks Toshio as he drives Taeko to the farm. Still, his optimism is a strong contrast to her father’s brusque pragmatism: Toshio half-jokingly believes in returning to ‘old ways of farming’, which seems like a veiled response to bursting bubble economy of Japan in the late 80s, a time of financial insecurity.
Materialism is the other side of the coin. In 1966, young Taeko fights with one of her sisters over a patent leather purse. In the film’s present, Kiyoko, the youngest member of the farming family, is desperate for Puma trainers (an 80s status symbol) which her mother is reluctant to give her. But older Taeko, like Toshio, is becoming increasingly entranced by the promises of a simple peasant life. Toshio’s love of Hungarian folk music reflects this theme.
Only Yesterday was not completed effortlessly, which is perhaps unsurprising given the anime industry’s infamous ‘crunch’ culture. Some animators on the production team, however, have described how exceptionally meticulous and demanding Takahata’s productions were. Even Miyazaki, himself known for being a hard taskmaster, claimed his creative partnership with Takahata sometimes made him curse his name at night.
Takahata was obsessed with realism. He was pioneering too — Only Yesterday may be the first anime feature with realistic cheekbones. Meanwhile, safflower farming is shown in pinpoint detail, the result of a field trip he took with some member of his team. One animator spent a year just perfecting the shape and colour of the flowers.
Hard graft permeates the film. The contrast between the lucid present moment and the soft colours of Taeko’s memories emphasise the rift between childhood and adulthood. Yet the ending reconciles the two, in a stroke of animated magic that doesn’t require too much suspension of disbelief.
Animation rarely gets this concerned with the minute drama of everyday life, or strives to make social commentary. Takahata and his team proved how rich and bounteous this ground could be, if only artists would be willing to dig it up.
