The defining experience of Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s childhood left her with badly scraped knees and her classmates with broken bones. During sixth grade in Osaka, Japan, Ms. Yamazaki — now a 34-year-old documentary filmmaker — practiced for weeks with classmates to form a human pyramid seven levels high for an annual school sports day. Despite the blood and tears the children shed as they struggled to make the pyramid work, the accomplishment she felt when the group kept it from toppling became “a beacon of why I feel like I am resilient and hard-working.”Now, Ms. Yamazaki, who is half-British, half-Japanese, is using her documentary eye to chronicle such moments that she believes form the essence of Japanese character, for better or worse. To outsiders, Japan is often seen as an orderly society where the trains run on time, the streets are impeccably clean, and the people are generally polite and work cooperatively. Ms. Yamazaki has trained her camera on the educational practices and rigorous discipline instilled from an early age that she believes create such a society.

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Persons: Ryan Yamazaki’s, Yamazaki —, —, Yamazaki Locations: Osaka, Japan