Programme Notes: Perfect Days

It’s difficult to not think about your own routines after seeing Perfect Days. Watching the modest movements of Tokyo toilet cleaner Hirayama, from his painless rise from bed, through the many thorough wipes of disinfectant on toilet bowls, to the minutes spent reading by lamplight until his eyes are too sleepy to continue, there’s a sense of rehearsed ease to this man’s life that shares DNA with all our daily movements.

Director Wim Wenders, a pioneer of the German New Wave, has always been interested in the mundanities of routine, no matter if it’s for a Patricia Highsmith thriller or a portrait of Germany’s celestial angels. But his fascination with the regular has never felt as concentrated as it does here; so dedicated is he to unearthing the gentle pleasures of a Japanese sanitation job that you’ll find yourself mentally returning to Hirayama’s work, his commute, his treasured cassette tapes, and his happily ordered life whenever the next time you do chores, run an errand, or perform your own domestic rituals.

Routines have a comforting, rhythmic texture to them, and Wenders has crafted a film that feels both unpretentious in its goals and finds something spiritual about the everyday. If we see our protagonist Hirayama in a monastic light, the subtleties of his life take on new meaning — this is not about comfort, but about achieving fulfilment with the cards we have been dealt. We are invited into this man’s bliss when he wakes up, drives to work, cleans toilets, washes, eats, reads… because we feel a similar human urge to simplify our lives to a level where we have minimised everything we don’t want to do. It’s very healing to live your life within parameters you control. It’s not just pleasure that Hirayama’s routine brings him, it’s peace.

Over two brief hours, we observe a cycle in Hirayama’s world, brought to life by a twinkly-eyed, salt-and-pepper-haired Kôji Yakusho. Yakusho has enjoyed a hugely varied career, capturing existential chills with director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Séance) and seeing mainstream domestic success with hits like Shall We Dance? and Tampopo. Watch for Hirayama’s private smiles, the nods and gestures he makes in lieu of words, how selective he is with what he says — the careful, meaningful choices Yakusho makes add up to a performance worthy of the Best Actor prize he received in Cannes.

When his estranged sister asks him if he will consider visiting his sick father, and (sniffily) if he’s really cleaning toilets for a living, the contrasting ways that Yakusho reacts — restless when emotionally probed, defiant when asked to be vulnerable, proud of his hand-sculpted life — are miniature, wordless masterstrokes from an esteemed talent.

Certainly, Wenders’ drama lacks the dizzying grit of harder social realist films; Hirayama’s sanitation work is a bit (ahem) sanitised, and critics have been quick to point out we never actually see a dirty toilet. This is explained by the fact that the film originated from the Tokyo Toilet Project, a Shibuya-wide renovation of 17 public toilets from over a dozen creatives that sought to express Japan’s internationally-recognised culture of hospitality — not the type of inspiration that Wenders wanted to muck up.

Once COVID measures relaxed in Japan, Wenders was invited to look at the facilities, hopefully so he’d photograph them or come up with a short film about the renovations. It sounds strange to say that from these toilets, Hirayama was born, but it’s a minor miracle that such an earnest and affecting character was spawned by Wenders’ visit — a man not defined by his job cleaning toilets, but who champions the type of inner life you’re unlikely to expect from his story.

If it were helmed by a less sophisticated filmmaker, it would be easy for Perfect Days to come across as patronising towards Hirayama. Romanticising the lives of working-class people and painting their modest lifestyles as poetic risks condescending towards those who are forced to struggle within systems that take their time hostage and curtail their income. A great number of sanitation jobs are awful, with physical demands for not enough pay, and someone who works them is not more noble because they do not aspire to rise above them to a more comfortable salary; Hirayama is not a venerable character because he warmly accepts a modest way of life.

But while Wenders clearly admires and respects his protagonist, it's not because of his acceptance of menial employment. Rather, Wenders is fascinated by a man who has managed to navigate the demands of modern urban living while remaining soulfully intact — in fact, by nurturing his own self more than anyone else around him. Hirayama’s class status is of little interest to Wenders and Japanese co-writer Takuma Takasaki — drama does not come from the character’s struggle to survive, but the quietly enforced isolation that Hirayama’s routine depends on.

We get a better sense of why Hirayama holds onto his modest routine when other people do the great disservice of interrupting it. His talkative junior colleague needs to use his van and then pushes him to sell his library of cassette tapes — a grievous interruption. His niece, who has temporarily run away from home, asks to accompany him for a shift at work — a reluctant inconvenience. He’s abandoned on a shift and has double the workload — a slight that will cost him valuable relaxing time at home.

But most affecting is the emotional cost to Hirayama’s independence. In each of Perfect Days’ chapters, he brushes up with the exhilaration and vulnerability that comes with connecting with people, where he considers if he’s truly nurturing himself by staying away from the messiness of other people. Here, Hirayama’s careful selection of classic tunes encased in scratched cassette tapes shoulder the emotional burdens he can’t bear; there’s something so poignant about letting the greatest singers of all time speak our pain for us. But still, Hirayama is not so perfect that he can’t cry to Nina Simone.

22 February 2024