Taeko Okajima is a 27 year old woman living and working in Tokyo. Looking for calm, escape, and connection to nature (and yet a way to stay busy), her ideal vacation is to travel to her sister’s in-laws’ farm in the countryside and help them harvest safflowers. She takes the train and is picked up by her brother-in-law’s second cousin Toshio, who takes her to the family. Throughout the journey and during her time on the farm, Taeko is constantly having flashbacks to her life as a schoolgirl—memories of early flirtations, learning about her period, having difficulty with math, performing in the school play, or the first and only time her father struck her, among a few others. In between picking safflowers, she joins Toshio for a few excursions where they talk about agriculture and the past. Pondering about her past, present, and future, Taeko is clearly yearning for something but is unsure of what. When Taeko’s farm relatives suggest that she stay and live on the farm, and marry Toshio, Taeko is forced to confront feelings of who she is and what she wants out of life.
“Only Yesterday” is an absolutely gorgeous animated film, produced by famed Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli. While less fantastical than other Studio Ghibli films I’ve seen, I was really taken by how stunning the animation was. It is also a very adult, ponderous film (not in a racy kind of way, but in weighty themes). The film steeps in the theme of transition, or undergoing difficult/painful/uncomfortable transformation to become something new. Taeko reflects on the journey of a butterfly, or the process of mashing safflower petals into dye—and this sort of builds the framework for the transitions she underwent, like puberty, or learning that she wasn’t considered “normal”. And it’s through this context that we see that Taeko doesn’t seem to be very passionate about where she’s landed in life. To what extend, I’m not fully sure. I think it was sometimes difficult to stay in step with Taeko’s point of view due to cultural and gender differences. For example, throughout the film, she shares no “romantic” encounters or flirtations with Toshio and yet it is suggested that she’s seriously considering a marriage arrangement. With this accessibility gap, I sometimes found the film slow. But I’m really pleased to have gone on the journey. And I still want to move to Japan.