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After seeing Kiju Yoshida’s debut film Good for Nothing (1960), we can add the filmmaker’s name to the rare list of studio directors whose first films signal immediate, restless talent, vision fully formed, grasp of cinematic tools and expressions already mature. While other Japanese New Wavers were trying to capture a youth audience through filming flighty takes on the too young and too irresponsible, Yoshida aims squarely at the malaise of post-college new adults and the newfound prospect of becoming a tired salaryman in your twenties. Or salarywoman—because as tightly hued as Yoshida’s picture is of lean, exasperated men fidgeting for meaning in their impassive apathy, Good for Nothing devotes just as much time to its female heroine—out of her 20s but wants to be no simple lover, housewife, or member of society, and is just as beset with a need for fulfillment and meaning. With...