Miyazaki’s Only Yesterday

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Only Yesterday tells the story of Taeko, a young woman whose summer working in the rural countryside is interspersed with memories of 1966, when she was 10 years old and suffered from an inferiority complex.

Produced by the mythological Studio Ghibli and directed by Hayao Miyazaki’s life-long collaborator Isao Takahata, the animated feature Only Yesterday was the highest-grossing Japanese film of 1991. It tells the story of Taeko, a young woman whose summer working in the rural countryside is interspersed with memories of 1966, when she was 10 years old and suffered from an inferiority complex. Only Yesterday is a powerful drama in which the Japanese postwar boom is set against the simple, difficult life of those who have decided to resist the temptation of relocating to the city to stay in the country and live off the land.

Only Yesterday will be screened at Collins Cinema at Wellesley College