Takahata's Ghibli Films Get a Kyoto Revival
The lineup covers the full second half of Takahata's career at Studio Ghibli, spanning from 1991's Only Yesterday to his final film, 2013's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. Each film screens for one week at Demachiza, a small independent cinema in Kyoto, according to Comic Natalie.
Takahata, who co-founded Studio Ghibli alongside Hayao Miyazaki and producer Toshio Suzuki, passed away in April 2018 at 82. While Miyazaki's name dominates international conversations about the studio, Takahata directed some of Ghibli's most formally adventurous work. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya alone took eight years to produce and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature in 2015.
The organizers say the retrospective exists to share Takahata's films "with future generations." The original 2020 edition launched that spring but was cut short by the pandemic.
The Full Schedule
Each of the four films gets a dedicated week:
- Only Yesterday (1991): July 31 to August 6
- Pom Poko (1994): August 7 to 13
- My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999): August 14 to 20
- The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013): August 21 to 27
The selection traces a clear arc. Only Yesterday, a quiet drama about a Tokyo woman reflecting on her rural childhood, was Takahata's first Ghibli feature after the devastating Grave of the Fireflies (1988), which predated the studio's formal establishment as a production entity. Pom Poko turned to environmental fable with shapeshifting tanuki battling Tokyo's suburban sprawl. My Neighbors the Yamadas broke from Ghibli's painterly house style entirely, adopting a loose, watercolor-sketch look to adapt a newspaper comic strip. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya pushed that visual experimentation further, rendering the classic Japanese folktale in charcoal-and-wash animation unlike anything else in the studio's catalog.
All four films were produced at Ghibli but sit outside the Miyazaki canon that most Western fans know first. For viewers who came to Ghibli through Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro, the Takahata side of the studio can feel like a separate filmography.
Looking Ahead
Demachiza has not yet announced ticket pricing or reservation details for the retrospective. The theater's event page should carry updates closer to the July 31 opening.
For international fans who can't make the trip to Kyoto, most of Takahata's Ghibli catalog is available on Netflix and Max (formerly HBO Max) in many territories, following the global Ghibli licensing deal that began rolling out in 2020. Grave of the Fireflies, notably absent from this retrospective and from the Netflix deal, returned to Netflix on July 15, 2026 in a separate arrangement. Only Yesterday also received a belated English dub and North American theatrical release through GKIDS in 2016, more than two decades after its original Japanese premiere.
The retrospective runs through the last week of August, closing out Kyoto's summer with The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, the film Takahata spent nearly a decade making and the last he would complete.