Ghost of Ueno (2026)

In 2023, Japan recorded over 80,000 missing persons, while 30,000 passed away in solitude. A heartbreaking ten percent remain nameless, mourned as "muenbotoke"—buddhas severed from all human bonds. Satsuki, a detached part-timer at an NGO near Ueno Park, drifts through her duties, numb to the desperate faces around her. That changes when she uncovers the hidden diary of a homeless man who died alone. Toshi, a wanderer who calls the park home, insists her eerie brush with the man’s spirit is fate, not chance. Following the diary’s cryptic clues, the pair plunge into a haunting excavation of Ueno’s postwar scars, piecing together the stranger’s forgotten life. They cross paths with those he once touched—each encounter peeling back layers of a man who deliberately severed every family tie. As Satsuki’s own dreams blur into memories, the trail twists toward a devastating revelation. Her relentless quest for closure finally converges on Toshi, a soul patiently awaiting the third return of his deceased wife, turning her search for the lost into an unexpected reckoning with love, loss, and the ties that refuse to die.