'You can make every routine pleasant by doing it as well as possible'

Perfect Days makes a strong case for simple living, finding perfection in work and finding quiet joy in the world around us.

In Perfect Days, the protagonist, Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), is a cleaner for the Tokyo Toilet. A middle-aged man, he lives alone in a small duplex apartment. Hirayama wakes up to the sound of a street sweeper, puts back a book that he’d been reading the night before, trims his mustache, shaves, waters his plants, wears his work attire, gets coffee, and drives to work in his van, listening to American rock and pop from the ’60s and ’70s. He goes from one site to another, diligently cleaning the public toilets of Tokyo and even uses a hand mirror to ensure that every inch is spotless.

At lunchtime, he sits in a park, eats a sandwich, and looks up at the leaves. He pulls a small camera from his pocket and takes pictures. When he returns home, he reads, falls asleep, and wakes up the next day to the sound of the street sweeper. The routine begins again.

Wim Wenders says, "He does work that most people would call routine, and a lot of people have a job that is a routine job. So a lot of people do the same work, so to speak, all along, and every day is the same. They go, they do it, and then they're happy to get back home. But it's a routine. The thing is, a routine is not very pleasant unless you make it pleasant. And you can make it pleasant. You can make every routine pleasant by doing it as well as possible, because that is a different form of satisfaction than just spending your time doing it and going home.

Doing it as well as you can is a personal satisfaction, and maybe nobody else notices but you, but it's a different attitude. And here, our hero is a step further - for him, every day of his routine is a new day, and he’s doing it as if it were the first time. And doing a routine each time as if it were the first time changes your life, because all of a sudden, you discover all the little variations you can make in the routine. You discover the pleasures that are hidden, and you are no longer a slave - you are your own person, and that's the big difference."

Giving an example, he says,"So, my last film, Perfect Days, although it was completely fiction, was shot entirely as if it were a documentary. And it was the actor who allowed me to do that because he became so much this humble toilet cleaner."
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