Perfect Days
This past week I finally got around to watching a film that had been on my list for the past six months. I don’t watch many movies these days. As someone who once aspired to make movies as an actor and director there is not much on today’s menu that captures my interest. I find myself returning more and more to classic films of the past.
The film Perfect Days was an exception. Perhaps it was due to being a Japanese film that initially caught my attention. I frequently watch Japanese films and series to maintain my sense of connection with the beautiful culture I called home for a year. I began seeing the reviews and awards it was receiving so I put it on my list.
On a lazy Sunday evening with no one around and nothing to do, it was the perfect time to watch this movie. The film is slow and quiet without much dialogue, qualities which I have always deeply connected with in Japanese culture. As the film opens, we are intimately allowed into the daily routine of Hirayama, a quiet man in the later season of his life who cleans public toilets for his simple way of living in Tokyo. Keep in mind, Tokyo is the largest city in the world.
Hirayama’s daily routine and the entire film are underscored by Hirayama’s vast cassette collection which give us hints into the past life that Hirayama has now left behind. These songs from the 60’s and 70’s set the tone for the film.
Like the mindfulness practices and schedule of a Zen monk, Hirayama’s life is all about routine and simplicity, mindfulness and beauty. His days and his life are expressions of finding the beauty in the simplest of moments and the mindful attention to the most routine activities and even the most menial work.
Hirayama wakes up every morning to the sound of sweeping in the street outside his window, something I have also grown accustomed to in Barranco, Peru. His morning routine, with precision, is exactly the same every day. From the folding of his futon to the careful watering of his bonsai trees, which he does with great joy and excitement, to the same can of Boss coffee he enjoys from the same vending machine before he sets off for his daily job of cleaning public toilets around Tokyo.
One might expect this to be the most boring film ever, and for those who miss its message it will be. Those who find it boring will likely be the same people who find sitting in nature and doing nothing boring, or listening to a beautiful piece of music boring. Throughout the day, we further experience how Hirayama perceives and interacts with the world differently. He sees the often unseen beauty in people, sits in parks taking photographs of trees, which he meticulously prints and catalogues. He spends his evenings alone in his humble home quietly reading books on his tatami mat, which he buys at the used bookstore off of the dollar shelf.
Most other people in the film do not understand Hirayama and dismiss him with distain, as one of those people who have jobs like cleaning toilets. Others we meet, like his young niece and his unreliable co-worker, are drawn unknowingly to him and transformed by Hirayama’s character and influence, although he has no compulsion to influence anyone at all. He is simply and humbly living his way of life, a completely shocking contrast out of sync with the rest of the world.
I unexpectedly connected deeply with this film for so many reasons. In just two hours this film effortlessly captured what I have tried to write about for the past five years. It did so beautifully and quietly without the need for words. It captured the essence of what it is to live simply and quietly in the world, in contrast the rapidly rushing current of the stream of modern culture all around us. Hirayama demonstrates for us what it is to see beauty and kindness all around us while creating joy and happiness from within through mindful routines and focus.
In a sense, he captures the essence of Zen.
Most importantly, the film demonstrates how often a truly beautiful life is painfully born out of great crushing loss and heartbreak. We never learn exactly what it was that was lost and ended so painfully in Hirayama’s life, but we glimpse through his tears that it was the catalyst out of which his now simple and beautiful life was born.
As I watched the film, I could have been Hirayama. I have lived his existence for many of the past five years. Like Hirayama, I have discovered the keys to a beautiful life in living simply, finding the beauty in routines such as sitting among the trees, taking photos for the sake of their beauty and writing about the beauty and kindness in the people and places I experience.
While my job of teaching English to Japanese people is not cleaning toilets, some analogies can be drawn to the routine and humility of the job. The beauty is found in the people, not the job.
Appropriately, the film ends with Hirayama driving at sunset while Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” plays on his cassette. In the last scene we see what likely earned Koji Yakusho the Best Actor Award at Cannes Film Festival and many other nominations. He is fully and completely immersed in the moment of life in all of its beauty, sadness, joy, sorrow, ecstasy and pain. He manages to convey all of this in his face without expressing a word. On his face, we see his joy, his tears, his pain and ultimately his enlightenment.
As Hirayama accurately puts it in the film, “Next time is next time. Now is now.”
Read The Guardian’s review of Perfect Days
Perfect Days can be streamed on Apple TV or Amazon Prime
Field Notes
the world is speeding up
yet I am slowing down
people are doing more talking
I am returning to silence
the world is seeking more entertainment
I am seeking more solitude
the world is striving after things
I am hungry for adventure and experience
many are seeking more
I am content with enough
the world is seeking to build more
I am inspired to create more
the world is seeking something “out there”
I have discovered everything “in here”
where is the world headed?
I feel as though I have already arrived
-KL
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It was such a gorgeous movie indeed. I'm glad you got to immerse in it, and that it connected with you.