Film Essay - Perfect Days
Sometimes we just have some perfect days like I was having before the year ends. It was the 27th when I was around the city looking for a shop I was told to look at before it closes down. When I arrived after a 30 minute train ride I saw it was not closing down but getting renovated.
After that I rode the train cabs once again to go to the movies in a cinema I wasn't in before in an spontaneous way. All my friends were out of town going to see their families and I thought why not watch a movie I have only seen in one headline and did not know anything else about.
I think this is the philosophy behind the movie "Perfect Days" directed by Wim Wenders, and staring Kōji Yakusho. But I din't know who these people were when I walked in nor did I care. I just wanted to watch a movie. The movie is showing us the days of the toilet in Tokio cleaner "Forgot his name might add later"(Wikipedia says Hirayama) where he wakes up, does his short morning routine, drives to work, does his work, eats at an park at shrein, goes to the onsen then goes eating in a subway station and then reads a book until he sleeps.
This routine is always followed not by self discipline but more like the wind always breezes by. In a slow and force of nature kinda way. His routine is never really broken. Yes Hirayama has weekends where he sleeps in a little bit. Yes he stays up late, doesn't come home at the same time as yesterday but it seems to fit him. There are multiple incidents where the story could have moved to more classic story of a problem that needs to be overcome by the power of the hero but the film just is not interested in it. Hirayama is a person who deals with problems in a head on approach to only not have to deal with them again. He is not grunting or cursing much (he is a really silent fellar). He just kinda picks up his routine again.
The routine as I described it above seems pretty familiar to someone who worked a 9 to 5:30 job. But Hirayama routine has some very good twists.
- He wakes up by hearing a sweeper on the street in front of his window,
- his morning routine includes caring for his ever growing bonsai collection in their own room,
- he listens through his collection of old cassettes with mostly american songs on his way to his shift, (thinks Spotify is just one shop somewhere)
- at his work he notices the interesting things and sun reflection that happen around him,
- at the shrine he takes a photo with his film camera of the light falling through the trees,
- at the onsen he immerses himself into the water completely,
- he seems to eat the same food at the subway station (we come back to this (no we don't)),
- the books he reads are not best sellers but instead the cheapest books from his local book shop that he seems to go by weekly.
Hirayama lives in the current moment. Telling his niece : "Next time is next time, now is now". This for me is radical. This movie is radical in its meditative state. I know slow movies exist and this (almost) big budget film does not reinvent the wheel. But I really love it (I even watched it a second time in a other cinema I didn't know before). This character lives in a routine and likes his routine and comes back to his routine because he likes it.
The last year my brain wanted to read, listen to and watch self help stuff. I know it is a scam. I even paid (part) for a meditation app. I learned for myself that meditation can really help settle yourself. This app I paid for had some self help advice with a orientalist (Buddhist and Zen touch) in it as well. As I don't plan to renew a app that thought me everything I wanted to learn in the first five sessions I binged through the self help advice on this app. And I really have to agree with CGP Grey 7 Ways to Maximize Misery - YouTube essay here: "True happiness is like a bird that might land on your ship, but never if you constantly stand guard to catch it. Instead improve your ship and sail into warmer waters" . All of these lessons tell me/us to live in the moment, be grateful for that moment, connect with other people, do the things you truly want to do. It can feel like an optimisation machine that keeps the bird away. It's so easy to tell other humans to live more fully in the moment but I think it is fucking hard to make a movie about it, where you leave and think I want that and I can have that.
Perfect Days is a film about living simply for the act of living. You enjoy the good moments and acknowledge the bad without falling into the dark hole that arises.
PS: I said I get back to the eating part of his routine but I think this post is long enough as it is. I just wanted to say when Perfect Days is about being happy by yourself Midnight Dinner (the original series and the netflix follow up) are about enjoying the life with others in a community. I love that show. So:
- Live in the moment
- Enjoy the moment with other people
Update 2026 May: I still think a lot about this movie. It is besides doctor who probably the one thing I have a lot of merch from (a great poster btw. and the OG cinema flyer).