Now is Now - Wim Wenders 'Perfect Days'

There is a scene about 90 minutes into Wim Wenders' enchanting film Perfect Days where our protagonist, Hirayama, is cycling over a bridge in Tokyo with his niece Niko. As the two of them cycle back and forth, weaving across the bridge in the sunset they call out to each other, “Next time is next time, and now is now.” In a film that says very little explicitly, this seems like a pretty clear mission statement.

Hirayama, played with delicacy and care by Koji Yakusho, is a toilet cleaner. Each day he wakes up, puts away his bed, brushes his teeth, trims his moustache, shaves, spritzes his plants, puts on his overalls, grabs his keys, phone, wallet, and coins, buys the same canned coffee from the same vending machine outside of his apartment, and then heads off in his van to tour the toilets of Tokyo. We know this because we see this scene right as the movie starts and then again and again, in longer or shorter form, throughout the film. From the very start, before we even know his name, we see that Hirayama is a person of habit.

Hirayama’s days seem to be so similar to one another that it might call to mind another film with a very different protagonist, Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day. But this comparison would only hold superficially. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray’s character, Phil, is condemned to repeat the same day over and over. His only escape seems to be facing down his failings and becoming a better person. There is no such feeling of imprisonment or punishment in the life of Hirayama. In an interview, Wenders was asked about the parallels with Groundhog Day and he said;

“When [Hirayama] opens his eyes, he’s happy that this new day starts. And that’s where the similarity with ‘Groundhog Day’ abruptly stops. He’s not suffering from having to go through his routine.”

The idea of amor fati or a love of one’s fate threads its way across a number of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The idea Nietzsche returns to time and again is that we need to think of our lives as if we were going to have to live them over and over. We should use that as a powerful point for reflection. How would we feel if that were the case?

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it."

- Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

Hirayama has built his life precisely in a way to be able to say “if I have to live this day, or even this life, once again, then so be it.” Not in the sense that he is reconciled to it, or that he could endure it, but that it could even be a source of joy. Hirayama does this through his absolute inhabiting of the moment. Wenders says;

“You know, the potter’s secret is doing it for the first time each time, and for our man, Hirayama, it’s the same. Each day, he’s doing it for the first time. And he’s not thinking how he did it yesterday, and not thinking how he will do it tomorrow. He’s always doing it in the moment. And that’s the potter’s secret as well. And that’s what gives a whole different dignity to any repetition.”

This mode of living for Hirayama seems to be at the centre of his contentment. It would be wrong, I think, to call him happy - not that he is unhappy - but more that it doesn’t seem to be happiness, as we might ordinarily think of it, that defines his daily life. Instead, we see contentment, a well-ordering of one’s life, a sense of acceptance, fulfilment, and the deriving of meaning from purposeful work. Part of this contentment seems to be grounded in Hirayama’s sense of simplicity. In the collection of Quaker writings known as Quaker Faith and Practice there is this advice;

"Try to live simply. A simple lifestyle freely chosen is a source of strength." 

- Advices and Queries 41

It is far from the only text to exhort us to think about simplicity, but the emphasis here on simplicity as a source of strength speaks to Hirayama’s way of being in the world. It is not so much that his simplicity is an ethical position, although it might be, nor is it that his simplicity is a response to consumerism, environmental catastrophe, or late-stage capitalism, although it certainly has much to say on those. Instead, Hirayama’s simplicity is a way of finding strength. When things enter into his life to unbalance his routine - like his feckless colleague Takashi (Tokio Emoto) or the sudden arrival of his runaway niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) - there is barely a tremor. In both cases, we’re drawn, for a moment, into thinking that these young, gregarious, modern people are here to finally draw this fusty old man into the 21st century, but this never happens. If anything, his composure, and his strength, turn out to be what they need.

We should distinguish, then, between two kinds of strength. There is the strength of a powerfully constructed building. Rigid, impervious, monolithic. There is strength there, but under the right circumstances - an earthquake perhaps - and that rigidity is its undoing. On the other hand, there is the kind of strength we see from water. The monumental force of water comes from its very ability to withstand, flow, and move. The sea isn’t going anywhere. This metaphor is one we find in the Tao Te Ching and seems to be an apt description for exactly the kind of presence Hirayama has;

The Best is like Water.
Water Benefits the Myriad Things.
Water does not contend.
It abides in that
Which the Multitude abhor.
It is close to the Tao.
The Best Dwelling
Depends on Terrain,
Best Heart-and-Mind
Depends on Depth.
Friendship on Kindness,
Words on Good Faith,
Government on Order,
Practical Matters on Competence,
Movement on Timing.
Wheresoever there is no Contending,
There is no Fault.

- Tao Te Ching verse 8

That kind of life comes at a cost, though. There are hints throughout that perhaps Hirayama once lived a different kind of life. We note the surprise and disgust in his sister’s voice when she hears the kind of work he does, and we see him reading literary works, Faulkner, Highsmith and the like. Throughout the whole film, there is a sense, unspoken but present, that Hirayama’s life is a choice and that much may have been given up for that life to be possible. Maybe Hirayama unwillingly found himself in this position and now chooses how to accept it and live with it, or maybe this is a life he purposefully built. Either way, Hirayama’s life is marked as much by what he does and what he has, as it is by what he doesn’t do and doesn’t have. There is no TV in his apartment and no computer that we see. He uses an old flip phone and vintage cassette tapes in his van, and he even asks his niece where the shop “Spotify” is when she talks about it with him. This choice, this rejection of sorts, is also a source of his strength. Later in the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu writes;

Which is Dearer:
Name
Or True Person?
Which means more:
Person or Property?
Which causes greater Harm:
Gain or Loss?
Undue Love
Comes at Great Cost.
Hoarding entails
Heavy Loss.
To Know Sufficiency
Averts Disgrace;
Whosoever Knows
When to Halt
Averts Misfortune,
Endures.

- Tao Te Ching verse 44

The man in the vintage music shop offers Hirayama large amounts of money for his tape collection, but he has no interest. We might expect to see him think about the offer, consider it, and decide otherwise, but it seems as if it barely even registers. What need would he have of that money? You may as well have offered him a space rocket or a pair of stilts.

Hirayama stands in a long tradition of those showing other, perhaps more meaningful, sustainable ways of living who also seem to occupy themselves with lowly work. The mendicant monk is a strong trope in fiction, and Hirayama is as close to that image as you can get whilst still earning a wage packet. He brings to mind Terry Practchett’s monk Lu-Tze who is forever sweeping. “I think of him as a kind of secular monk,” says Wenders. The Taoists, too, were often keen to emphasise that we don’t need to ascend to lofty heights to understand the way but that it’s everywhere. All around us. We only need to look. There’s a story about the Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi trying to teach this very lesson;

The Master of East Wall asked Master Zhuang: “This thing called the Tao, wherein does it exist?”
Master Zhuang replied: “It is everywhere.”
“Please be more exact.”
“It is in an ant.”
“As low as that?”
“It is in the smallest weed.”
“Lower still!”
“It is in the tiniest shard.”
“How can it be so low?”
“It is in piss and shit.”
The Master of East Wall fell silent.

I don’t think we need to read Hirayama as thinking that enlightenment can be found in shit and piss, but certainly, that satisfaction, meaning, purpose, and contentment do not have to be gold-plated, leather-bound, rear-heated, and tied to a gut-tightening price tag. Wenders wants us to feel drawn to this man and his life;

“I had to tell it in a language that would evaluate his everyday life and make his everyday life look as beautiful as I wanted it to look. I think most everyday routines of people in movies are not nice, and I wanted his everyday routine to be gorgeous. I wanted you to wanna live like this.”

It is hard not to feel a certain envy of the strength and serenity Hirayama displays. He isn’t impervious to the world around him and he cries, shouts, and laughs but only when it is natural and without any hint of self-consciousness. These moments, as with all the moments we see of Hirayama’s life feel ephemeral. We’re not mourning the fact that everything is fleeting, though, instead, we’re finding exactly the well-spring of contenement in that very idea that nourishes Hirayama. At the end of the film, there is a black-and-white shot of dappled sunlight passing through trees. We’ve seen Hirayama take 35mm film photos of this scene over and over again in the film, but here the shot lingers. Over the top of this image we’re given some simple text:

“Korembi”
The dancing shadow patterns created by sunlight
shining through the rustling leaves of trees.

This, then, might be the secret to it all. To see the dancing, shifting, ever-changing world, to understand its flow, and movement, to grasp the ephemerality of it all, and to find simple, sustainable meaning all the same. It is not about what we have, or who we are, but about what we do in this very moment.

“I busy myself in my garden hoeing, cultivating, planting, or tending. I rejoice in my books and am soothed by the music of my Lute. In the winter I warm myself in the sun, in the summer I bathe in the brook. I have received little enough reward for my labour, but my mind has enjoyed a constant leisure. In this way, Content with Heaven and accepting my Lot, I have lived out the years of my life.”

- Tao Yuanming.