Perfect Days (2023): A Quiet Masterpiece About a Toilet Cleaner Who Might Be Happier Than You

There are films that try to impress you with car chases, explosions, and last‑minute plot twists. And then there is Perfect Days (2023), a film about a middle‑aged man who spends his days cleaning public toilets in Tokyo and somehow ends up feeling like the most emotionally together person on Earth.  

Directed by Wim Wenders, the film is a slow, meditative stroll through the life of Hirayama, a Tokyo toilet cleaner played with extraordinary stillness by Kōji Yakusho. It is not a loud film. It is not a flashy film. It is barely even a “film” in the conventional sense of the word. It is closer to a series of observations, a calendar of moods, and a love letter to the ordinary.

On paper, the premise sounds like the kind of comedy set‑up that would be ruined by a punchline. A man wakes up early, washes his face, grabs a can of coffee, heads to a public toilet, scrubs, mops, sorts trash, and then goes home. Repeat. That is literally the plot. Repeat with minor variations.  

But that is exactly what makes Perfect Days so quietly devastating. It asks the audience to look at a life that most people would consider unremarkable, and then whisper: What if this is the good life?

A Day in the Life of a Toilet Cleaner

Hirayama’s days are rituals, not schedules. He does not rush. He does not scroll. He rarely even speaks. He checks his phone only to check the weather, because the weather matters when you work outdoors cleaning public facilities most people would rather forget existed.  

He listens to rock and roll on cassette tapes in a  modest KEI van, the kind of tapes that still click and hiss and make the driver feel like he has a radio friend who only plays songs he likes. He reads books, drinks from the same bottle, and stops at the same kiosk to buy the same drink. He checks on the trees planted near the toilets, taking comfort in their slow growth. He hums. He smiles at strangers. He smiles at toilets.  

To many, this sounds like a life of resignation. But in the film’s eyes, it looks like a life of choice. Hirayama is not escaping the world; he is choosing a smaller, more manageable version of it. He is not hiding from people; he is choosing to be kind, polite, and present in a way that most of us reserve only for Instagram captions.

The Beauty of the Boring

One of the film’s most powerful tricks is that it refuses to make Hirayama’s life “interesting” in the usual cinematic sense. There are no dramatic confrontations. No big money plot. No shocking twist where he turns out to be a secret billionaire who lost his memory. He is just a man who got up one morning and decided to live with a certain rhythm, and then stuck to it.  

The beauty of Perfect Days is that it treats this rhythm as sacred. It lingers on the way he wipes a sink, the way he waters a plant, the way he folds his clothes. It lingers on the way he looks at a vending machine as if it holds some kind of lesson. It lingers on the way he smiles at a coworker who has clearly had a rough night.  

In a world where content is designed to be fast, loud, and emotionally extreme, a film that says “watch this man scrub a toilet and then enjoy his lunch” feels quietly revolutionary. It is like someone decided to make a high‑budget meditation app and called it a movie.

The Past That Never Fully Explains Everything 

Of course, Perfect Days is not a pure mood piece. It does have a backstory. Hirayama’s past is hinted at, then slowly revealed, and then quietly folded back into the present. The film understands that people do not move from “broken” to “fixed” in a neat arc; they just learn how to live with the parts of themselves that will never quite heal.  

There are surprises. There is a spiritual angle. There are family complications. But the film never leans into melodrama. It treats Hirayama’s past like a downstairs drawer: sometimes you open it, sometimes you ignore it, but you never scream at it. That refusal to be dramatic is one of its smartest moves. It trusts the audience to feel the weight without being told to cry.

Why It Hurts So Much

The reason Perfect Days hits harder than most big‑budget films is simple: it holds up a mirror to the way modern life is supposed to look versus the way it actually feels.  

Most of us wake up with either a plan, a to‑do list, or a sense of panic. We scroll through other people’s curated lives and then feel bad about our own uncut grass, unwashed dishes, and unremarkable routines. We keep waiting for a “big moment” that will justify everything. A promotion. A relationship. A viral post. A miracle.  

Hirayama, by contrast, lives in a world where the big moment is deciding to water the plant, or to buy the same drink again, or to smile at a coworker who smells faintly of disinfectant. That is the “perfect day” in question. Not a day without problems, but a day where the small things are done with care and attention.  

And that is what stings. The film does not judge you for wanting more. It just quietly asks whether more is actually what you need.

Funny in the Most Unfunny Way

The film is not a comedy, but it has a deep, dry sense of humor. There is something inherently funny, in the way life always is, about a man whose life is so precise that his most dramatic decision might be which cassette tape to play on the way to work.  

There is humor in the way he makes do with a small apartment, a few books, and a select collection of rock music. There is humor in the fact that the toilets he cleans are more polished than the average living room. There is humor in the way he treats his job – something most people would consider undignified – as an act of quiet dignity.  

The film is never trying to be a joke. It is just allowing life to be as absurd, as simple, and as weirdly beautiful as it naturally is. That is the kind of humor that does not come from punchlines, but from recognition.

Kōji Yakusho and the Power of Stillness

The entire film balances on the shoulders of Kōji Yakusho, an actor who has made a career of saying a lot while doing very little. Here, he is given a role that requires almost no dialogue and almost all feeling. And he pulls it off with such ease that it becomes the opposite of showy; it becomes convincing.  

You believe Hirayama is a man who has made peace with his limitations. You believe he is a man who has chosen his life, rather than been forced into it. You believe he is a man who has suffered, but who has learned to carry that suffering without collapsing.  

Yakusho’s performance is so controlled that it feels almost like a restraint exercise. But restraint, in this case, is strength. It is the kind of acting that makes you wonder why anyone ever feels the need to shout in films at all.

Why It Stays With You

By the time Perfect Days reaches its end, it has not tried to “solve” anything. It has not given you a neat moral lesson or a life‑changing quote wrapped in a shiny label. It has simply shown you a man living his life, day by day, trying his best.  

And that is why it sticks. Modern films are full of epic journeys, grand quests, and dramatic transformations. Perfect Days is the opposite. It is the film that says: What if the epic journey is just learning how to have a decent day without hurting yourself or anyone else? 

It is a film about memory, about work, about family, and about the quiet ways people try to be good. It is also a film about toilets, cassettes, vending machines, and the kind of trees that most people walk past without noticing.  

That, strangely enough, is what makes it a masterpiece. It finds poetry in places most stories would never bother to look, and it makes you wonder why the rest of your life suddenly feels so loud and so small in comparison.

Perfect Days (2023) is not a film for people who want to be entertained. It is a film for people who want to be reminded. It does not try to change your life. It just quietly suggests that the life you already have might be more than enough, if you’re willing to look at it differently.  

It is funny in the way real life is funny: not because anything is a joke, but because the sheer seriousness with which people take themselves is absurd when you step back. It is intense in the way that stillness is intense: it forces you to pay attention to the details most stories throw away.  

So if you ever find yourself watching a movie about a toilet cleaner and feel strangely moved by his cassette tapes, his routine, and his quiet smile, that’s not a sign you’re over‑thinking. It’s a sign Wim Wenders and Kōji Yakusho have done exactly what they set out to do.  

They’ve made a perfect day look like the most radical thing in the world.