Overview
Perfect Days (2023), directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders and produced as a Japanese-language film shot entirely in Tokyo, arrived to widespread critical praise and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature Film. It represents a rare collaboration — a celebrated international director working entirely within a Japanese cultural context — and the result is one of the most quietly affecting films in recent memory.
The Story
The film follows Hirayama (played by Kōji Yakusho), a man who cleans public restrooms in Tokyo for a living. His days follow a precise, almost ritualistic rhythm: he wakes before dawn, tends to his plants, buys a canned coffee from a vending machine, drives to work listening to cassette tapes of classic rock and folk, eats alone, reads before bed, and sleeps. Repeat.
On the surface, almost nothing happens. And yet Perfect Days manages to be deeply absorbing — because Wenders and Yakusho together make Hirayama's inner life radiant. His small pleasures, his gentle observations of the world, and his occasional, understated encounters with other people accumulate into something genuinely moving.
Performance
Kōji Yakusho's performance is the film's heart and its greatest achievement. Working largely without dialogue, he communicates decades of lived experience, quiet contentment, and buried sadness through the smallest physical gestures. It is the kind of performance that reminds you what film acting can accomplish when given the space to breathe. His work here earned him the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival — a richly deserved recognition.
Visuals and Atmosphere
Cinematographer Franz Lustig captures Tokyo in a way rarely seen in international productions — not as a futuristic spectacle or a bustling metropolis, but as a city of light filtering through leaves, of quiet early mornings, of human-scaled moments. The restrooms Hirayama cleans are actually real Tokyo public toilet installations designed by notable architects as part of the Tokyo Toilet Project, and they are photographed with genuine beauty.
Themes
The film is, at its core, about the value of attention — of noticing the world around you, finding meaning in repetition, and resisting the pressure to want more than what you have. It draws loosely on ideas from Japanese philosophy and aesthetics, particularly the concept of komorebi (the interplay of light and leaves) which Hirayama photographs obsessively on a small film camera.
There is also something quietly political in the film's portrait of dignified, skilled manual labor — a gentle pushback against the idea that certain kinds of work are beneath notice.
Final Assessment
Perfect Days is not a film for viewers seeking plot-driven momentum. It asks for patience and rewards it generously. For those willing to settle into its rhythm, it offers one of the most genuinely humane cinematic experiences of recent years. It is also an extraordinary portrait of Tokyo — both the city's surfaces and its quieter soul.
Verdict: A masterful, contemplative film elevated by an extraordinary lead performance. Essential viewing.