Produced by Toshio Suzuki, it was animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network and Hakuhodo, and distributed by Toho.

The film follows a twenty seven year-old Taeko Okajima as she takes a holiday with her relatives in the country, during the course of her trip she reminisces about her life when she was ten.

While traveling at night on a sleeper train to Yamagata, she begins to recall memories of herself as a ten-year-old schoolgirl in 1966, and her intense desire to go on holiday like her classmates, all of whom have family outside of the big city.

This precipitates a series of memories from the same school year, including how she met her first boyfriend (a baseball star in an adjacent class), the first time she and her family ate a pineapple, and how she learned about and indirectly dealt with puberty.

When she sees her young cousin Naoko unsuccessfully ask her mother for Puma sneakers, Taeko tells her about how she once similarly wanted a purse.

Her elder sister Yaeko was asked to give her an old one, the ensuing argument continues, culminating in a sulking Taeko becoming indecisive about whether to join her family to go out for food.

In a moment of panic she chases her family out of the house but is slapped by her father for walking outside barefoot (an indicator of poverty in post-War Japan).

Seeing how they all connect with each other, Taeko realizes that the rural country is making her nostalgic, and that her memories are wielding a tapestry for her present self to reminisce on.

[6] Animated by Studio Ghibli,[7] the film's producer Hayao Miyazaki was intrigued by the original Only Yesterday manga, believing there was potential value in depicting the type of children's story it told.

Takahata had difficulty adapting the episodic manga into a feature film, and he, therefore, invented the framing narrative wherein the adult Taeko journeys to the countryside and falls in love with Toshio.

Beginning in November 1990 full-time employment (including fixed salaries), regular recruitment, and in-house animation training programmes were initiated, doubling production costs.

[18] The holiday Taeko takes to the countryside is a journey of remembrance that recalls her childhood, re-discovering how her mundane feelings and memories mix with her present self, drawing on a tradition of live-action family movies in classic Japanese cinema.

[19] To Susan Napier Only Yesterday is a celebration of "youth, innocence, and nostalgia for a disappearing past", which she categorises as exemplifying the 'elegiac' genre mode in anime.

[23] As part of this aesthetic separation, the frame of the flashback sequences uses a softer colour palette with faded edges, while the 1980s scenes use precise lines in animating characters and environments.

[24] The film's "conservative" structure embodies a perspective Napier refers to as "quintessentially 'Japanese'", reflecting a domestic positioning in a Japan whose international role was changing.

[26] Part of this nostalgia is felt through the comparison between the city and the countryside, continued urban expansion is set against a desire to live in a traditional manner.

Taeko briefly takes off her gloves when handling the safflower to empathise with past generations of farmers who worked for the aesthetic luxury of women in Kyoto.

[29] To Odell and Le Blanc, the opposition between Taeko's urban and rural environments leads to a debate concerning the gap in social community between the city and the country.

[31] They compare this form of community living to that shown in Takahata's earlier film Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968), noting that in Only Yesterday "socialism is a notable but subtle subtext".

[32] Roger Hecht in his analysis of the film utlilises the concept of climate (風土, fūdo) from the philosophy of Watsuji Tetsuro to explain the metaphysical relationship people form with nature.

"[34] He concludes his analysis by reflecting on the family's judgements that Taeko has internalised in her childhood memories, explaining her experience of fūdo and blooming romance with Toshio as a form of psychological recovery.

[37] In 2015, GKIDS announced it would release the film in theaters in North America in 2016 along with an English dub, with actors Daisy Ridley, Dev Patel, Ashley Eckstein and Alison Fernandez confirmed to lend their voices.

[45] In celebration of its 25th anniversary, Only Yesterday was later released on Blu-Ray and DVD on July 5, 2016, by GKIDS and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, earning $1,780,357 in sales revenue.

[46] A subtitled version of the film was aired on Turner Classic Movies in January 2006, as part of the channel's month-long salute to Miyazaki and Ghibli.

[48] The repeated Eastern European theme in the film, particularly in the soundtrack reflecting the peasant lifestyle still present in the area draws parallels with Japanese rural life.

5" in a scene where Taeko is eating lunch, and making references to Hungarian musicians when she is in the car with Toshio ("Teremtés" performed by Sebestyén Márta & Muzsikás.

The critical consensus states "Only Yesterday's long-delayed U.S. debut fills a frustrating gap for American Ghibli fans while offering further proof of the studio's incredibly consistent commitment to quality.

[61] Roger Ebert gave the film a very favorable review in his essay regarding anime and the other work of Studio Ghibli calling it "a touching, melancholy meditation on the life of the same woman at ages 10 and 27.

"[63] Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com awarded it a similarly positive review, saying "Like Kaguya, it functions as a highly sensitive and empathetic consideration of the situation of women in Japanese society—but it's also a breathtaking work of art on its own.