Toshi Came Back From Japan is a feature documentary directed by Marcos Yoshi, and produced by Temporal Filmes.

Toshi Came Back from Japan Official: Instagram | Linktree

Toshi came back from Japan and vanished before our eyes. Now we must film his ghost. The family’s fading memories intertwine with imagined forms of his return, where remembrance and reinvention blur into one haunting presence.


Logline

Toshi’s three sisters and brother, the director’s father, gather at the family’s riverside ranch to recall their youngest sibling, who died in 2022. In 1990, after the family business collapsed, Toshi travelled to Japan as part of the dekassegui migration. Alone and unable to speak Japanese, he endured the exhausting rhythm of factory work until his unexpected return to Brazil. His migrant experience triggered severe mental distress that led to years of medication and hospitalisation.
Memories of Toshi are fragmented and elusive. Confronted with this void, three artists – an actor, a musician and a dancer – are invited to evoke his spectral presence through performance, sound and movement.
The film blends remembrance and fabulation, transforming private grief into a collective reflection on migration, silence and mental fragility. Using intimate testimonies, 1990s home videos of Brazilian workers in Japan, the film reimagines Toshi’s existence – and the unseen lives of his generation.

Synopsis

When I heard my uncle had died, I didn’t exactly feel sad. Like most of my family, I was never close to him. Still, I couldn’t shake the sense of loss thinking about the last twenty years of his life.
His story was impossible to ignore. He spoke little, always uneasy, and I never knew how to reach him. That discomfort drew me to his story.
When I lived in Japan, he lingered in my thoughts. Between 18 and 20, I worked long shifts, felt lonely and disconnected—something in his experience mirrored mine. Through his life, I reflect on Japanese-Brazilian migration from the eyes of young men: how masculinity shapes work, emotion, and the way we deal with pain.
This film continues Welcome Back, Farewell (2021), shifting from my parents’ migration to my uncle’s generation—men who left chasing dreams and found solitude instead. What moves me most are the inherited silences that shape how we live as a family. Cinema is where I try to turn that silence into something visible.

Director's statement

Teaser

Marcos Yoshi is a filmmaker and researcher with a BA, MA, and PhD in Cinema from the University of São Paulo. His films explore Japanese-Brazilian experiences through migration, memory, and displacement – including In Her Care (short, 2020) and Welcome Back, Farewell (feature, 2021). Toshi Came Back from Japan deepens his exploration of memory, fabulation, and haunting to depict unseen lives.

Marcos Yoshi's minibio

Temporal Filmes Profile

Temporal Filmes is a production company focused on author-driven documentaries exploring social issues, artistic processes and innovative biographical narratives. Our work is grounded in creating films with lean, versatile crews, often inspired by family stories that unfold into broader themes such as gender, race and history. The result is a body of films with strong international appeal that reflect contemporary concerns and expand audiences’ horizons.

Temporal Films profile

Toshi Came Back from Japan

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