An arch observer of the Meiji-era middle class, Soseki’s nameless sourpuss isn’t impressed with featherless bipeds—he finds them perplexing and undeservedly vain. “They look carefree, talking nonsense, but if you knock at their hearts, they resound sadly,” he notes in Kon Ichikawa’s 1975 film adaptation of the book, and no character better exemplifies the silly sorrow of the human condition than the cat’s owner, played by screen icon Tatsuya Nakadai. A well-intentioned philosophical boob, all he can seem to do is yack, yack, yack as Japan changes all around him; Nakadai himself will be on hand to yack with movie historian Michael Jeck following the screening. The film shows at 5 p.m. Sunday, June 22, at the National Gallery of Art’s East Building Auditorium, 4th St. & Constitution Ave. NW. Free. (202) 737-4215.