British Japanese director Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s documentaries are a process of trying to understand the culture in which she grew up. “Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams” (2019) used a high school baseball tournament as a window into Japanese society. “Monk by Blood” (2013) and “Temple Family” (2021) meditated on the age-old tussle between tradition and progress, via the story of a priest-to-be with a taste for DJing.

For her latest feature, Yamazaki spent a year filming at an elementary school in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, with the aim of showing how the citizens of tomorrow are formed. Her thesis, echoed by various characters in the documentary, is that primary education in Japan is about more than just academic subjects: It’s teaching students how to live in society.

Starting in spring 2021, “The Making of a Japanese” is an intimate chronicle of a turbulent year defined by the strictures of the coronavirus pandemic. Face masks are mandatory, even outdoors; hand sanitizer is omnipresent. Teachers get to grips with using Zoom during classes, to varying degrees of success. While posing for a photo with another student on the first day of school, a 6-year-old grumbles that he can’t socially distance.