Perfect Days
PERFECT DAYS
The Moonlight essay
CinemaPerfect Days and the Difference Between Solitude and Emotional AbsenceRead the essayStoryline
The whole story, ending included.
A Tokyo toilet cleaner's days, cassette tapes and komorebi; the loneliness that is not lonely.
Hirayama cleans public toilets in Shibuya and lives alone in a modest flat east of the Sumida River. Each day begins the same way, at dawn. He tends his plants, drives to work listening to old cassettes, and cleans every toilet with a thoroughness nobody asks of him. At lunch he sits under the trees of a shrine with a sandwich and photographs the sunlight falling through the leaves. At night he reads a paperback until he sleeps, and his dreams come in flickering black and white.
His young colleague Takashi is late, loud and always broke, and keen on Aya, who works in a girls' bar. Takashi borrows Hirayama's van, talks him into having his tapes valued, and later quits without notice, leaving Hirayama to cover his shift. Aya brings back a tape Takashi had slipped into her bag, asks to hear it once more in the van, and kisses Hirayama on the cheek. In one toilet Hirayama finds a folded scrap of paper with a game of noughts and crosses, and plays on, week after week, with a stranger.
One day his niece Niko turns up at his door. She has run away from her mother, his wealthy and estranged sister, Keiko. For two days she goes to work with him; they photograph trees and ride bicycles together. Keiko arrives in a chauffeured car to take her home. Their father's dementia has worsened, she says; will he visit him in the nursing home? He will not, but he holds her before she goes. She asks whether he really cleans toilets for a living. He says yes. When the car has gone, he weeps.
Later, at the small restaurant where he eats on his day off, he sees the woman who runs it in a man's arms. He buys highballs and drinks by the river, and the man comes to ask for a cigarette. He is her former husband; he has cancer and came to make peace, and he asks Hirayama to look after her. Hirayama offers him a drink and gets him to play shadow tag. The next morning Hirayama drives to work again, Nina Simone singing "Feeling Good" on the tape, and joy and sorrow pass across his face together.
Starring
Koji Yakushoas Hirayama
A public-toilet cleaner in Tokyo who lives by a quiet, exact routine of work, music, books and trees.
Hirayama’s story
Hirayama says little and needs little: dawn, his plants, a can of coffee, the toilets of Shibuya cleaned more carefully than anyone asks. Other people's troubles keep arriving. He will not sell his cassettes to fund Takashi's evening with Aya, gives him cash instead, then sells one tape for petrol. Aya's kiss on the cheek startles him. When his sister comes to fetch his niece, Niko, he refuses to visit their father but holds her, tells her that yes, he really does clean toilets, and weeps once the car has gone. By the river the restaurant owner's former husband, who has cancer, wonders whether two shadows grow darker where they overlap; Hirayama insists they do, and says it cannot be that nothing changes. The next morning he drives to work again, joy and grief crossing his face together.
Tokio Emotoas Takashi
Hirayama's young colleague, late, loud and always broke, who is chasing Aya and quits without warning.
Arisa Nakanoas Niko
Hirayama's niece, who runs away from her mother's comfortable home and spends two days at his side.
Niko’s story
Niko has fought with her mother, Keiko, and run away, and one evening she is waiting at her uncle Hirayama's flat when he comes home. He lets her stay, and when he slips out to work the next morning she follows him and helps with the cleaning. For two days she shares his routine and photographs trees with him in the park, and her questions about the family touch a past he does not talk about. Cycling with him over a bridge, she asks whether they can ride on to the sea; he says next time, and they call it back and forth as they weave across the bridge: next time is next time, now is now. After her second night, Keiko arrives in a chauffeured car, and Niko goes home with her.
Aoi Yamadaas Aya
A young woman working in a girls' bar, whom Takashi is keen on and who returns the tape he took.
Yumi Asoas Keiko
Hirayama's wealthy, estranged sister, who comes to fetch her daughter and asks him to visit their father.
Tomokazu Miuraas Tomoyama
The restaurant owner's former husband, ill with cancer, who shares a drink and a game with Hirayama by the river.
Why it matters
Perfect Days asks whether a small, repeated life can be a full one. Hirayama cleans toilets, and the film gives his work the same care he does, which is its argument about dignity and about what makes a life worth living. Its restraint also keeps a history just out of sight: the wealthy sister, the father he will not visit, the tears once the car has gone. That quietness has drawn criticism. Some reviewers, and a University of Tokyo professor, argued that it romanticises low-paid work and ignores the real conditions of labour in Japan. The film began when Wim Wenders was invited to see the Tokyo Toilet project in Shibuya, and it won Koji Yakusho the Best Actor award at Cannes in 2023. What it leaves open is on his face in the last shot: whether solitude chosen and kept with care is peace, or grief managed one day at a time.