How Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days Romanticises Poverty

Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days (2023) revolves around Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho), a toilet cleaner content with his job and life. He spends most of his days listening to music, reading books, going to a public bath, and enjoying drinks at a local bar. Unlike the people around him, Hirayama has no greater ambitions. He seems satisfied with his job, as it can finance the subdued lifestyle he always wanted. But he wasn’t always a toilet cleaner. The film hints at a privileged life that Hirayama left behind to move away from materialism and find inner-fulfilment, implying that his happiness results from a much simpler lifestyle. 

We rarely see working-class characters as protagonists in popular cinema, so the movie intrigued me. I was eager to explore the realities of the working-class life in Japan, a demographic overlooked in popular media. So I walked into the film expecting to see an honest depiction of the life of a toilet cleaner, but I walked out feeling cheated.

Why? Let’s first consider Hirayama’s daily routine: buying coffee, travelling in a car, visiting a public bath, drinking at bars—none of this comes for cheap, even for someone living frugally. He also lives in a big house and owns a van. I checked with my friend in Japan, who said it didn’t sound like the portrayal of a toiler cleaner, but a fairy tale. Wenders, as a result, diminishes the hardships faced by the working-class and risks romanticising the reality of this profession. It results in a picture-perfect, sanitised version of the working-class life. Perfect Days would have been more honest had Wenders marketed it as ‘quasi-fantasy’.

He also omits the stigmas that sting a toilet cleaner. One scene, though, touches upon this: Hirayama finds a lost child at work and helps reunite him with his mother. But instead of showing gratitude, she wipes the child’s hand, as if he’s become ‘polluted’ by Hirayama’s touch. It hints at the shame and social bias associated with such professions but, besides this small bit, the film remains indifferent to it. Hirayama, ever kind and composed, accepts the insult and moves on, and the movie never reflects on the incident. Is Hirayama used to such insults? We don’t know. Moreover, it felt like the movie doesn’t want to know, as it could ‘sully’ the bubble of the portrayal of a toilet cleaner.

So, despite making Hirayama’s profession the focal point, Perfect Days only pretends to engage with the life of a toilet cleaner, glossing over the job’s real challenges. It’s instead more captivated by the ‘aesthetic’ of their work, presenting beautifully composed shots of The Tokyo Toilet Project, emphasising sophistication and modernity. It dilutes the specificities of Hirayama’s profession, turning it into a narrative gimmick. The film would have worked perfectly fine had Hirayama’s profession been something else. 

Perfect Days is also co-written and produced by Takuma Takasaki, the creative director of Dentsu Group, which collaborated with Koji Yanai, the board director of the Fast Retailing group, on The Tokyo Toilet Project. The project developed 17 high-tech toilets designed by the world-renowned architects in the Shibuya Yard of Tokyo. The film spares no effort in portraying these sleek, state-of-the-art facilities in all their elegance, reinforcing the sense that it’s more interested in these toilets than those who maintain them. As a result, Hirayama’s identity feels disconnected from his profession and other toilet cleaners. He has no friends in his field, except for one young colleague with whom he shares his work hours. But this character is portrayed as comical, clumsy and inept—an obvious contrast to Hirayama’s composed and privileged background, making the disparity between them even more apparent. 

A romanticised portrayal of the working-class just serves the privileged, allowing them to indulge in the fantasy of ‘simple living’ that they want to ‘experience’. This skewed image trivialises the real problems experienced by individuals for whom ‘simplicity’ is not a choice but stems from structural injustice.