Only Yesterday

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Present & Past Taeko

It's 1982 and 27-year old unmarried Taeko Okajima works as an Office Lady in Tokyo. She decides to spend her summer holiday at her sister-in-law's farm in the countryside to help out with the safflower harvest, since she liked going there the year before. She sees it as a great way to get a break from the city life for a while.

During her trip she gets overcome with memories of when she was 10 years old and in fifth grade. In a series of flashbacks, imaginatively interwoven with her current life, a picture forms of her youth, filled with math problems, friends, boys and the typical throes of a girl growing up. It results in her wondering whether she is being true to her own nature in life, since she wanted to be in the country as a little girl already.

Only Yesterday, Japanese title Omoide Poro Poro (おもひでぽろぽろ), was released in 1991 and is a typical Studio Ghibli product--minus the fantastic plot devices that permeate most of the studio's work. It was directed by Isao Takahata and produced by Hayao Miyazaki. The result features lots of lovely scenery, intriguing, believable characters and wonderful, fluid animation.

Tropes used in Only Yesterday include:

• Adorkable: Toshio. Clumsy, not terribly intelligent, a little too forward, and generally a bit of a hick, but very friendly and eager to put others at ease. He proudly declares himself a peasant and listens to strange Hungarian folk music.
• Author Tract: The movie is filled with monologues about the importance of Japanese farm life.
• Bland-Name Product: Young Taeko does her daily exercises listening to a "Suny" radio.
• Call to Agriculture
• Christmas Cake: Taeko's mother is annoyed that she turned down a marriage proposal, saying "at 27, that's the best she's going to get".
• City Mouse: Taeko, obviously.
• Coming of Age Story: In a double dose--once when Taeko was a child, and another at a later age.
• Cool Big Sis: Taeko to one of the younger girls on the farm.
• Family Theme Naming: Taeko and her older sister, Yaeko.
• Ghibli Hills: You have to ask?

  I Choose to Stay

• Imagine Spot: Loads as Young Taeko, a bit less as an adult.
• Iyashikei
• No Periods, Period: Averted. Girls discuss their periods. Boys discuss the girls' periods. Girls chase boys with brooms.
  • Played straight by The Walt Disney Company, who haven't released Only Yesterday in the US for this reason. The addition of a Furo Scene doesn't help, either.
• Real Place Background: Eidan Marunouchisen subway, Uenoeki Station and the some of the countryside.
• Scenery Porn: As usual for a Ghibli movie, but this one delivers some lovely scenes involving safflower.
• Shown Their Work: Lots of details from 1960's culture (including The Beatles) and the Subaru R-2 subcompact car.
• Shout-Out: A visual one for E.T. Doesn't make sense in context.
  • The dress Taeko wears as a little girl is the exact same dress Satsuki wears in My Neighbor Totoro.
  • In one scene, Taeko watches and sings the theme song from Floating Gourd Island, an actual Japanese children's puppet show from The Sixties.
• Slice of Life
• The Stoic: Taeko's dad
• Written Sound Effect: The Japanese title, roughly Trickling-Rain Memories. Taeko's memories of her childhood come trickling back to her in this fashion.