TwoCents | Perfect days and Shrines

Light cuts through the window of a private jet casting beautiful shadows and multi-coloured rays as it passes through a plastic bottle leaning against the wall of the plane. "There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see”. There is a comforting sentiment in the tweet by Jordan Peterson that no matter where oneone is, the light of the divine might be gleaned. This is true while soaring through the heavens but also perhaps, perhaps, while Scrubbing toilets in Japan. In 2020, the Tokyo Toilet Project invited sixteen designers of note to reimagine 17 public restrooms in Shibuya City, Tokyo. The feat of architecture and design detail on show is now some of the most impressive in the world. The Tokyo Toilet, a collective project between The Nippon Foundation and the Shibuya city government, outlines a high standard for maintenance and accessibility in all toilets. The initiative is a beautiful solution to the infamously dirty nature of public toilets and a provision & for what now stands as artistic pieces in the Shibuya landscape. These toilets are major props on the stage of the 2023 film by Wim Wenders; perfect days.  <img src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000007278.jpg" alt=""> Perfect Days features Hirayama, a middle-aged Toilet cleaner who exemplifies a life of contentment. The film is so titled, not because the protagonist is stumbling upon the most revelrrous days of pleasure, but because each day for him, is an exercise in exalting the ordinary. Hirayama Starts each day awakened on his Tatami; he makes his way to his plants and gives them a spray of water before descending to the bathroom of his modest apartment. he brushes his teeth and meticulously trims his moustache before climbing back up to don his “The Tokyo Toilet” overalls. Every day, the same: he takes the right amount of money he needs and visits the same vending machine for some coffee before entering his truck and heading to his toilet cleaning shift. Once there, the attention paid to cleaning even the most obscure crevice of the bathrooms is particularly notable in the context of his slacking co-worker. He is a creature of habit, performing each step of the day like a religious ritual till sleep and resumption the next day. Truthfully, he is fully fulfilled in just waking up, but also in living each day like a new day with the fullest attention to these daily practices. <img src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000007291.jpg" alt=""> At lunch, the same sandwich is his meal. Every day he sits in the park as he bites into it; looking at the light piercing through the tree canopy and as always, he takes the same picture of it with his analog camera. One would be forgiven for thinking even briefly that he is hard of speech or hearing. He wastes nothing - not food or moments, and not even words. Every aspect of his day follows a routine. The film commences with what we might describe as the perfect Hirayama day. All these parts of the day executed how he might plan it. However, following the perfect day, the protagonist is met with novelty each day that alters his routine in small or big ways. His co-worker, for example, needs to borrow his truck and then some money to impress a girl - this inadvertently costs him more money than he normally takes to work; his niece visits, running from home - this means he now sleeps elsewhere, eats differently, bathes differently; at a point, his coworker quits and leaves him with a maddening shift. Through it all, however, for Hirayam San the day remains all it should be. He takes it in his stride and remains only in that moment."Next time is next time and now is now” a statement he tells his niece encapsulates his philosophy of life. We see glimpses of the world he has chosen to live apart from. When his sister visits to pick her daughter, asking him to go see his father - almost in tears as she asks if he's really cleaning toilets; when a man in a record store offers him a fortune for his tapes; the world of more doesn't even register as a valid offer. For whatever reason, he has chosen his simple days and is fulfilled by it.  <img src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000007285.jpg" alt=""> This is not stoicism in the sense of an unwavering rock in the face of life's seasons about him as he drives towards purpose. He is not making decisions on the basis of deep logic and reason; nor is he chasing a grand purpose. He cries after meeting his sister; he shares a beer and game with a stranger dying and he shows great empathy for his coworker and the people he encounters each day; perhaps once upon a time his stoic qualities led him to this life of peace he now cherishes.Hirayama is more so utterly content with whatever the day throws in the way of his plans - he will wake up to the perfect day we saw first but if life nudges a dying stranger in his way he would perhaps share his time and photography with him, and after sharing a laugh and cry would be on to the next moment. He gives an utter devotion to what is before him now. He buys one book and reads it before buying even one more. He uses no cellphone and when he's driving down the highway or riding his bicycle there is nothing but that very activity.  <img src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000007292.jpg" alt=""> His pilgrimage daily to the toilets of Shibuya is where he sees his cathedrals. His Amor Fati as Nietzsche addressed is his love of his fate: “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—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.” Each day he is awake, he is content and he takes measured pride in this simple world he lives. The film, perfect days is introspective and not explicit in claims but it does show us the deep value a man derived in this very simple life he has chosen for himself. Next time is next time and now is now; and as this simple toilet cleaner shows, there is divinity in the mundane present.

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