During their travels, it is revealed that none of the persons are who they initially seemed to be: Oshima, repeatedly described as a weak and obedient character, embezzled money from his company, was seeing another woman named Kimiko, and was reluctant to marry Yoshie because her older sister Sayo was living in an open relationship with another man.

Imamura had taken interest in the phenomenon of ongoing vanishings of people in Japan, which summed up to thousands every year.

Imamura, who had planned to make a film on her research, was startled by what he saw as the woman's self-centeredness and tendency to perform in front of the camera.

[7] Following a 2012 US release tour of A Man Vanishes,[8][9] Ronnie Scheib of Variety saw an "explosively provocative film" which "progressively and aggressively blurs distinctions between documentary and fiction".

[10] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it "wildly startling in its execution" and an "increasingly complex look at a man, his culture and his country", haunted by "questions of cinematic realism and how the camera changes everything".