Japanese directors with any kind of ambition usually end up making a family drama, which is to Japanese cinema what the Western used to be to Hollywood: the core national genre.
Of course, plenty of bad-to-mediocre directors here have made family dramas, just as plenty of bad-to-mediocre Hollywood directors once made Westerns. But in the same way the Western was defined by its giants, John Ford and Howard Hawks among them, so the Japanese family drama is exemplified by its masters, including Yasujiro Ozu and Mikio Naruse.
The latest to make the attempt is Yuya Ishii, who was turning out quirky black comedies at a rapid clip in his early 20s and screening them at festivals around the world, including special sections at the 2008 Rotterdam and Hong Kong festivals. Among the honors this wunderkind accumulated was the Edward Yang New Talent Award at the 2008 Asian Film Awards, when he was 24.