“Perfect Days”: A Mundane but Happy Life

This was a movie that was recommended to me by many friends. Taking place in Tokyo and directed by a German director Wim Wenders. “Hirayama cleans public toilets in Tokyo, lives his life in simplicity and daily tranquility. Some encounters also lead him to reflect on himself.“ Reviewers have described it as “life affirming.” I also recommend it as I found it to be meditative.

The main character and bachelor Hirayama lives a solitary life in the analogue world. He finds pleasure and joy in small things. Waking up to a neighbor sweeping the streets. Looking at the sky. Taking old film pictures. Watering his plants. Listening to old cassette tapes of 60s & 70s music. Buying and reading classical old books. Going to his local old style Japanese baths. Eating at his favorite local restaurants. Bicycling across the city. Looking at the Skytree building as he drives by. Following his regular routine as he embarks on his job as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. 

The Guardian in a review by Wendy Ide says it even better: 

“Hirayama’s ascetic existence is stripped back to basics: music, played on cassette tapes collected, we assume, in his long-ago youth; secondhand books bought from the budget section of the local bookstore; a point-and-shoot film camera with which he captures the things that please him; the interplay between the sky and the trees. Trees, it seems, have a particular significance for Hirayama, something that he pays back by carefully rescuing fragile Japanese maple seedlings in order to nurture them in his apartment.”

His life and routine is disrupted slightly when his niece shows up at his house. The bulk of the movies’ dialogue happens here. He tells his niece about how he and his sister live different lives. 

“The world is made up of many worlds. Some are connected and some are not. My world and your mom’s are very different.”

We get glimpses of his previous life when he meets his sister. It is clear that they are from an affluent and wealthy family. And that he is estranged from his father who disapproves of his life. But he seems to be living this life because he wants his freedom. The director actually says:

“Hirayama is the master of his life. Everything he does, he does it because he wants to do it.”

The big lesson from this movie is that joy can be found in the simple things. Living in the present like the main character of this movie: “Next time is next time. Now is now.”

What i love is that he seems genuinely happy and the movie ends appropriately with an old song called “Feeling Good” by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse:

“It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day. It’s a new life for me. And I’m feeling good.”