Heartwarming / Only Yesterday

• When Taeko tells Toshio the story of a poor classmate who refused to shake her hand, you can see Toshio try to hold her hand several times.
• The ending, so very much. Made even more heartwarming by "Ai wa hana, kimi wa sono tane", the Japanese cover of Bette Midler's "The Rose".
  • To elaborate, earlier in the film we are shown several scenes where Taeko, both as a child and an adult, does things a bit differently than is expected by her society, and is criticized by her family for it. As a child, she questions the logics of fractions while her sisters and classmates simply go along with the rules, whether they make sense to them or not. As an adult, she is still unmarried at 27, while one of her former classmates is now married with two kids. The ending has Taeko finally being true to her childhood self, doing things the way she wants to, and seems to have finally found happiness because of it.

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