From his 2005 feature debut “Bare-assed Japan” to the 2011 film “Mitsuko Delivers,” Yuya Ishii made scrappy indie films with a raucous comic edge that were hits on the festival circuit. Then, with his 2013 hit “The Great Passage,” about a geeky editor (Ryuhei Matsuda) struggling to make a new dictionary and find love, Ishii shifted gears to more serious and commercial fare.
