茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS
茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS

[FIRST IMPRESSIONS] “Don’t Forget Your Handkerchief When Watching Isao Takahata’s Only Yesterday” by Jeremiah Dutch

Isao Takahata (director). Only Yesterday, 1991. 118 min.

If 1991’s Only Yesterday (Omohide Poro Poro) had been made in America, it would have been live action, with somebody like a young Mia Farrow, Sissy Spacek, Holly Hunter, or Barbara Hershey in the lead role, somebody capable of conveying both strength and vulnerability. Oscar bait, for sure. Interestingly, the Bette Midler song “The Rose” plays over the closing credits. Without giving away the ending, that song should give some indication of what kind of film this is. Only Yesterday is a three-hanky weeper in the vein of Beaches (1988), which starred Midler and Hershey. Only this animated film is much better and has an entirely different plot.

The main character is Tokyo office worker Taeko Okajima, voiced by pop star Miki Imai. Taeko is twenty-seven and already beaten down by life, beginning with her mistreatment by her family during childhood. The Japanese title of the film translates as “Memories Keep Tumbling Down” (like tears?). The film moves back and forth in time, between Tokyo in 1966 and Japan in the 1980s. Flashbacks do not always work in film, but in this case they are handled very effectively, perhaps because it is animated.

The grown-up Taeko takes a much-needed holiday to visit farming relatives in the countryside and help with the harvest. Meanwhile, she reminisces about her pre-adolescence, which is something out of a Judy Blume book. Taeko begins to fall in love with country life and with her brother-in-law’s second cousin, Toshio, voiced by Toshiro Yanagiba. She must decide whether to remain in the big city, the only life she knows, or follow her heart.

Like From Up on Poppy Hill (2011), another Studio Ghibli animated film, Only Yesterday makes me nostalgic for Showa-era Japan (1926–1989), a time and place in which I did not live. However, neither film romanticises a period when gender roles and social norms seemed to be as stifling as the second-hand smoke. Yikes! When was the last time you saw someone other than a villain smoking in a film, especially an animated one? Despite the parallel storyline exploring Taeko’s childhood, Only Yesterday is mostly for grown-ups. It is the kind of film that is almost unheard of in American cinema, an animated film that is not for children and in which the medium is not used to serve fantastical or supernatural elements. It demonstrates quite clearly that animation is an art form equal to live-action cinema.

Director Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies) deserves immense credit for deftly adapting the 1982 manga by Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone on which Only Yesterday is based, particularly for the film’s focus on the lives of Showa-era women and its dignified portrayal of rural Japan. Give this film a watch, and be sure to bring a hanky or two, or three.

^{How to cite: Dutch, Jeremiah. “Don’t Forget Your Handkerchief When Watching Isao Takahata’s Only Yesterday.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 6 Sept. 2026, chajournal.com/2025/09/06/only-yesterday.}

A long-time, US-born resident of Japan, Jeremiah Dutch writes across both cultures. He holds a master’s degree in education from Temple University and has taught at the post-secondary level for over seventeen years while writing academic articles, fiction, and non-fiction. He currently teaches at Rikkyo University. In 2022, his short piece “Zen Failure in Kyoto” received an Honourable Mention in the Seventh Annual Writers in Kyoto Competition. It was adapted from his novella Gaijin House, soon to be anthologised by Running Wild Press. Another adapted excerpt, “Transported Souls in the Motel of Regret”, appeared in the 2024 anthology Mono no Aware: Stories on the Fleeting Nature of Beauty. He lives in Yokohama with his family and is an avid runner. [All contributions by Jeremiah Dutch.]