A Journey in Simplicity: A Reflective Look at Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

Plot Summary and Character Arc in Perfect Days

Perfect Days, directed by Wim Wenders, tells the story of a quiet Japanese man named Hirayama (played by Kōji Yakusho), a man in his sixties who has reduced his life to a sequence of daily rituals. As The Guardian puts it, “every day is like the last”: Hirayama wakes up early, waters his plants, grabs a canned coffee, and drives his van to work—cleaning public toilets across Tokyo. He lives alone and speaks little, yet he takes sincere pleasure in small daily ceremonies: listening to 1960s rock music on cassette tapes, reading Faulkner and Highsmith novels, photographing trees during lunch breaks, and caring for his maple saplings.

His life is peaceful and seemingly uneventful, but a series of subtle events begin to ripple through it: his young and disorderly colleague adds comedic moments, a shy waitress kisses him once and shares a fondness for Lou Reed tapes, and—most notably—his niece Niko arrives after running away from home. Her presence leads to a reunion with Hirayama’s sister, Keiko, who is shocked by his modest lifestyle and profession. She asks him to visit their aging father who is now suffering from dementia. Hirayama, with quiet sorrow, refuses—and later breaks down in solitude. Small episodes—such as a man leaving tic-tac-toe notes in a public restroom—recur through these days.
 

Critical Reception of Perfect Days

Perfect Days has received largely positive reviews from English-language critics. Wendy Ide of The Guardian calls it “Wenders’ most successful fiction film in years,” praising its slow rhythm, contemplative atmosphere, and hidden emotional depth. The Los Angeles Times describes it as “a beautiful ode to care, both physical and philosophical,” noting that Yakusho’s performance is “full of quiet joy.”

Sight & Sound hails Perfect Days as Wenders’ best narrative film since Wings of Desire, highlighting its poetic and meditative style. NPR refers to it as “a delicately emotional fable,” saying that despite some familiar tropes, the film honestly raises questions about life, loneliness, desire, and despair.

Yakusho’s performance has garnered universal acclaim. Critics note his ability to convey a rich inner world with barely any dialogue, using only his deeply expressive face. The final scene—focused on his transformed expression—has been cited as a key reason he won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival.

Philosophical Themes in Perfect Days

Critics have described Perfect Days as a philosophical meditation on everyday life, solitude, and beauty in simplicity. Wendy Ide calls it “a Zen-like reflection on beauty, contentment, and simplicity.” The recurring image of komorebi—sunlight filtering through leaves—serves as a metaphor for attentiveness to fleeting moments. As Sight & Sound writes, Hirayama “sees flashes of light and shadow in every leaf,” and this acute observation draws him toward a life rooted in the present moment.

The film’s choice to embrace silence, reject modern technology, and focus on mindful living is widely seen as reflecting Zen and Eastern philosophical traditions. However, some critics caution that it could be interpreted as overly romanticizing “passive resignation.” Glenn Kenny, in contrast, argues that it portrays a conscious choice of meaningful living: “After a certain age, all you want is for the world to let you live as you are.”

Perfect Days and the Question of Representing Life

Canova has said of Perfect Days:

We understand that Hirayama comes from a wealthy family, which he has voluntarily distanced himself from. He says, “The world is made of many worlds. Some are connected, some are not.” He has severed some ties and made a philosophical decision: to live in solitude, immersed in music, books, plants, and silence. A minimal existence—an essential being—in the spirit of Ozu (Wenders’ favorite filmmaker, to whom he dedicated the unforgettable Tokyo-Ga). Virtually nothing “happens” in the film. Days repeat, mingled with Hirayama’s dream sequences. In these black-and-white negatives, his dream world is filled with tree branches, feminine faces, and fragile, breathtaking origami. Shadows, only shadows: “If two shadows overlap, do they get darker?” asks Hirayama during a nighttime encounter with a stranger. “Or do they retain their ethereal gentleness?” Wenders continues his exploration of the nature of image and the act of seeing: how representation preserves the world within the frame of vision.

Reflections on Criticism

We often hear that cinema can spark a new kind of life within the viewer, or at least offer a new perspective on life. But it’s important to stand at the edge of this relationship between cinema and life, and examine it more closely. “Life” itself has many layers: lifestyle, life form, critical life, the meaning of life, and so on. This raises a question: which aspect of life do critics mean when they discuss Perfect Days?

At the very least, there is consensus that Perfect Days is an attempt to describe everyday life. Everyday life, in this context, stands in contrast to artificial lives—constructed realities detached from the social fabric we live in. These fabricated lives often exist only in imagination, without a place in the concrete world.

By opening a window into the ordinary, the film creates space for reflection. In any medium, describing something inherently invites thought. Yet some interpretations of Perfect Days go further. They not only present the film as depicting everyday life but go so far as to celebrate it—or even treat it as the essence of life. However, it’s crucial to remember that simply finding a lifestyle pleasing on screen doesn’t automatically endow it with value or knowledge. Criticism becomes meaningful when it can bridge this way of life with arguments about its worth. Description alone does not exempt us from the responsibility of evaluation.

This lingering question remains: Can art and cinema provide such justification? Or is that the task of criticism itself? If we draw a clear line between criticism and artistic work, we must recognize that each has its own rules and contexts. Mixing the two can blur boundaries and obscure the very questions we seek to understand—something we often witness in current reviews and discussions.