There’s a Japanese concept called komorebi that denotes the beauty of sunlight shimmering through tree leaves as they sway in the wind, throwing dappled shadows. Komorebi is, by its nature, a moment that only happens once: the unique confluence of wind patterns, sunbeams and the movement of leaves, never happening in quite the same way again. To notice it requires attention, an awareness of the fleeting beauty in the everyday. There’s probably a reason why we don’t have a word for it in English.
In “Perfect Days” (2023), directed by Wim Wenders and written by Wenders and Tokuma Takasaki, Komorebi is one of the ways in which Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho, who won Best Actor for the role at Cannes) finds meaning in his daily routine. A public toilet cleaner who lives alone, Hirayama goes about his days in almost ritualistic fashion. He rises, waters his collection of saplings cultivated from city parks, buys a canned coffee at a vending machine, and listens to cassettes on his drive to work. His job is humble and hands-on, but he approaches it with care and precision. He eats his lunch in the same park every day, sometimes pausing to photograph the light through the trees, and has a simple dinner at a train station restaurant. He ends the night with reading. The next day, he repeats the pattern.
It may seem like a lonely life, and sometimes it is: although Hirayama rarely speaks, Yakusho conveys pangs of longing and regret. It’s certainly not a luxurious life: his work is hard and thankless, and due to his limited finances, he sometimes has to go without even those simple pleasures that he allows himself. But it’s also a life filled with meaning, joy and a profound appreciation for the present moment. Hirayama’s routine is possible because he doesn’t share his home with anyone, but we do see him repeatedly make room in his heart for the people who intersect with (and sometimes derail) his regimented days: his immature coworker Takashi (Tokio Emoto), melancholy hostess club worker Aya (Aoi Yamada), and his teenage niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) who has run away from home. Hirayama’s life is simple, but it isn’t one of deprivation.
I remember once in grad school listening to a professor discuss Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the sanctification of human endeavor (which I’ve referenced in this column before), the idea that all labor can be sacred if we approach it with the right disposition. My professor said that this idea was limited: certainly, many sorts of work might bring us closer to God, but would we say that’s the case for, say, a trash collector? That example, I could tell from their tone, was meant to be patently absurd.
This was a professor who I respected enormously and I understand the point they were making. But even so, I found myself thinking: Why not? There are certain types of work that we consider more traditionally meaningful—teaching or social work or artistic endeavors—but that doesn’t preclude people from finding meaning in so-called menial jobs. Indeed, maybe it’s the people who are expected to be the silent cogs keeping our society running who are most in need of finding some measure of beauty, grace and significance in their day-to-day lives.
“Perfect Days” isn’t a romanticization of poverty, or that insidious bromide that “The poor are so much happier because they have so much less.” It isn’t an argument in favor of a system, but a way of looking at the world that can apply regardless of socioeconomic status. Simone Weil (certainly not one to romanticize poverty) wrote: “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.”
Hirayama has found a way of life that allows him to focus on the simple things that bring him great joy. He will never be rich or famous, never be a husband or father. But he is content—not because he has settled for less but because he has discovered deep meaning and beauty in a life that others would demean or reject. By paying attention, he has made his entire life a prayer.
“Perfect Days” is streaming on Hulu.
