Hirayama is a man who knows exactly where he belongs. He cleans public toilets in Tokyo’s upscale Shibuya district as part of The Tokyo Toilet project, and he does it with the same thoroughness and precision that defines everything else in his life. In Perfect Days, Wim Wenders directs a film about a man who finds meaning in routine, and he builds an entire movie around it. The result is a quiet, deliberate drama that earns its patience.
Trailer, via The Match Factory.
Hirayama’s Routine
Koji Yakusho plays Hirayama as a man whose days are defined by structure. He starts at dawn, works his route, and returns home to his modest house in a middle-class neighborhood east of the Sumida River. His free time is devoted to music cassettes, which he listens to in his van, and to books by Faulkner, Kōda, and Highsmith, which he reads every night before sleep. His dreams are rendered in flickery black-and-white sequences at the end of every day, a visual shorthand for the private world he keeps separate from his work.
The film opens with Hirayama’s morning ritual. He dresses, packs his bag, and heads out to clean the toilets that dot the streets of Shibuya. His routine is not just a job; it is a performance of care. The camera lingers on his hands as he scrubs, and the shots are intimate without being intrusive. This is not a film about the indignity of menial labor. It is a film about dignity itself.
“In a world of fleeting moments, find the beauty that lasts.”
The Tokyo Skytree
Hirayama’s love of trees is a constant presence in the film. He gardens, photographs trees, and eats sandwiches in the shade under their branches. The light that filters through the leaves, called Komorebi, becomes a recurring motif. The contrast is the Tokyo Skytree, which looms over the city in every shot of his drives and bike rides. The tree and the tower stand side by side, representing two very different ways of seeing the world.
The Skytree is a modern monument, a vertical statement of ambition and progress. Hirayama, by contrast, is horizontal. He moves through the city on foot and by bike, looking down at the ground and up at the trees. The film’s visual language is careful to keep both in frame, even when the human figures are small. It is a subtle way of reminding the viewer that the man on the ground is the one who sees the world most clearly.
Takashi and Aya
Takashi is Hirayama’s young assistant, and he is the opposite of his boss in nearly every way. He is late, loud, and not as thorough. He is also the catalyst for the film’s central conflict. One day, a young woman named Aya calls on Takashi at the toilet he is cleaning, and he hurries to finish so he can leave with her. When his motorbike will not start, he persuades Hirayama to let him use the van.
Aya works at a girls bar, and Takashi wants to spend time with her. When Takashi slips Hirayama’s Patti Smith tape into Aya’s purse, he is trying to connect her to the man who means more to him than he admits. The gesture is clumsy, but it is also sincere. It sets the stage for a series of events that will test Hirayama’s attachment to his routines.
The Cassette Collection
Hirayama’s collection of music cassettes is more than just a hobby. They are a record of his life, a set of memories stored in magnetic tape. When Takashi talks him into getting some of his cassettes appraised, the discovery that they are valuable changes the dynamic between the two men. Takashi urges Hirayama to sell, but Hirayama refuses. Instead, he gives Takashi some cash so he can take Aya out.
This moment is the heart of the film. Hirayama could walk away from his job, his home, and his habits, but he chooses not to. The cassettes represent his identity, and selling them would be a kind of betrayal. The film does not judge him for this decision. It simply observes it, and the weight of the choice hangs over the rest of the story.
The Dreams
The dream sequences are the film’s most distinctive element. They are impressionistic, black-and-white, and they appear at the end of every day. They show Hirayama’s inner life, his fantasies, and his fears. They are not literal visions of the future. They are the private language of his subconscious.
These sequences are brief, but they are essential. They provide a counterpoint to the mundane reality of his waking hours. Without them, the film would be a portrait of monotony. With them, it becomes a meditation on the gap between how we live and how we imagine.
The Nominations
Perfect Days premiered on 23 May 2023 at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d’Or. It won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Best Actor Award for Koji Yakusho. The film was also nominated for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards, becoming the first film directed by a non-Japanese filmmaker to be nominated as the Japanese entry.
These nominations are significant, but they are not the reason to see the film. They are evidence of the film’s quality, not its purpose. The film stands on its own as a work of art, and its success at Cannes and the Oscars is a reflection of that fact.
Comparing the Two Worlds
| Element | Hirayama’s World | The Skytree’s World |
|---|---|---|
| Perspective | Ground-level, horizontal | Towering, vertical |
| Light | Natural, filtered through leaves | Artificial, bright |
| Scale | Small, intimate | Monumental, overwhelming |
| Value | Personal, remembered | Modern, appraised |
The table above captures the film’s central tension. Hirayama’s world is small, personal, and rooted in memory. The Skytree’s world is large, impersonal, and rooted in value. The film does not resolve this tension. It simply presents it, and lets the viewer decide which perspective is more honest.
The Verdict
Perfect Days is a film about finding beauty in the world, even when the world is full of noise. It is a film about the value of routine, and the danger of losing it. It is a film about the people we choose to remember, and the ones we forget. It is a film about a man who is perfectly happy, and the things that threaten to make him less so.
The film is not perfect. Its pace can be slow, and some viewers may find the middle section less compelling than the opening or the ending. But the cumulative effect is powerful. By the end, the film’s refusal to hurry its subject feels like a victory.
The film’s tagline promises beauty that lasts, and it delivers on that promise. The beauty in Perfect Days is not spectacular. It is found in a sandwich eaten under a tree, in a cassette tape played in a van, in the quiet precision of a man doing his job. That is the kind of beauty that lasts.
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