The film, The Promised Land or Rakuen, concerns three characters, who were in the vicinity of a fork in the road from where a young girl disappears, the only trace found of her, is her backpack. The first is Takeshi, a lonely young man traumatized by the bullying and violence he and his non-Japanese mother have endured from the locals. Suspicion falls on Takeshi, but Takeshi's mother provides him with a solid alibi. One of his few allies was the grandfather of the disappeared girl, but he turns against him. Twelve years later, a girl disappears near the same fork in the road. Takeshi freaks out calamitously, when he realizes he is a suspect in the recent disappearance. Zenjiro, a middle-aged beekeeper, lives peacefully with his pet dog near the forked road, while trying to cope with his wife's death. A year after the second disappearance occurred, he plans business to revitalize the town, although he not originally from the locality. As a consequence he is shunned by the local people and falls into depression, which leads to violence. Finally there is the flutist Tsumugi (Hana Sugisaki), who was with the first young girl just before her disappearance and is deeply hurt by the event. The two men interact with the attractive Tsumugi, thus she provides the thread that ties the stories together, and after moving away to the city following the second incident, she dutifully returns to her 'paradisiacal' hometown. Through its course, this ironically-named film addresses the decline of rural Japan and the traditional rural ostracism of outsiders, be they Japanese or not. Confusingly there are many shifts back and forth in time, and it's sometimes difficult to empathise with the two weird men, however the viewer should have no trouble persisting to see if things will turn out well for the enigmatic Tsumugi.

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