The Tokyo toilets that inspired Wim Wenders' Oscar-nominated film 'Perfect Days'

Perfect Days

, Wim Wenders' latest film, nominated for best international film at the 2024 Oscars, has not only aroused admiration for its production and plot, but also for the environment in which it takes place: the set of 17 high-tech public bathrooms built in two parks in the center of Tokyo where the protagonist of the story works as a cleaner.

A route of small architectural gems located in the Shibuya district, one of the urban areas most photographed by Western tourists in this capital, thanks to its massive crossing, immortalized in films such as

Lost in Translation

,

by Sofia Coppola, or

Babel

,

by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

More information

Review of 'Perfect Days', by Carlos Boyero

“My idea was to create installations open to anyone regardless of gender, age, nationality or disability,” says Koji Yanai, creator and owner of the project, as well as producer of Wenders' film, by email.

He mentions a conversation with his father, Tadashi Yanai, founder of the fashion multinational Fast Retailing, owner of Uniqlo, who told him: “It's good to have a particularity, but the most important thing is to be made for everyone.”

From there he decided to support the organization of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, “addressing a fundamentally human issue”: visiting the toilet.

Public toilet in Tokyo designed by Kashiwa Sato.

To counteract the negative image of the public bathroom “as a dark, stinking, scary and difficult to find place,” Yanai called on well-known creators to redesign “public bathrooms that everyone would like to use.”

In collaboration with the private non-profit organization Nippon Foundation and the local government of Shibuya, the result is a mix of public art, technology and hygiene called The Tokyo Toilet (TTT).

Creative and functional solutions

The spaces are a sample of creative and functional solutions signed by 16 designers, academics and architects of recognized prestige such as Fumihiko Maki, Tadao Ando and Shigeru Ban, Pritzker Prize winners in 1993, 1995 and 2014, respectively.

Public toilet in Tokyo designed by Nao Tamura.

Inside each of the enclosures there are toilets from the TOTO brand, a pioneer in electronics applied to toilets, whose extreme sophistication surprises the foreign visitor and, almost always, enriches the anecdote of their visit to Japan.

The sinks that Hirayama, the protagonist of Perfect Days

, cleans daily

, make up an ideal tour to get to know the project.

The closest to Shibuya Station, in Jingu-Dori Park, is a metal structure signed by Tadao Ando that resembles a circular object recently landed from another planet in a Japanese cherry orchard.

Its projecting roof evokes the eaves of the traditional Japanese house that extends towards the garden and serves as a transition between the inhabited area and nature.

The most talked about, due to the unusual concept, are the toilets with transparent walls designed by Shigeru Ban in two adjacent parks in the Yoyogi neighborhood.

When the user closes the door and locks it, the walls become opaque.

The idea is to be able to confirm from the outside whether the service is busy and its state of hygiene.

Public toilet in Tokyo designed by Tadao Ando.

The toilets designed by Toyo Ito, architect of the Porta Fira Towers in Barcelona, ​​are located in front of Hachimangu, the Shinto shrine where Hirayama's character eats his sandwich every day and takes the opportunity to photograph the light filtered by the leaves of the trees.

Ito designed three cylinders crowned with their respective domes, creating a set that refers to the mushrooms that grow in the temple gardens.

Thinking about the urgency associated with searching for a sink when walking through an unfamiliar place, product designer Nao Tamura chose the color vermilion red to paint her construction, a triangular volume located on a narrow plot next to the train tracks.

The metal walls that imitate paper are a tribute to a traditional Japanese method of wrapping gifts and offerings.

In the elegant neighborhood of Shoto, where a mother rushes to disinfect her son's hands after touching Hirayama, is the project of Kengo Kuma, the most sought-after Japanese architect of the moment and author of the National Stadium of Japan, where the inaugurated the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Called in English

A Walk in the Woods

, it is composed of five modules like huts covered with pieces of cedar, faithful to the architect's constant of giving visual prominence to the materials natural.

Public toilet in Tokyo designed by Kengo Kuma.

The most used bathroom of all is the one designed by Kashiwa Sato at the west exit of Ebisu Station.

It is a set of four toilets wrapped in a lattice through which you can see if someone enters or leaves.

Sato, a regular designer of Uniqlo's corporate communication, created the pictograms that mark all TTT spaces.

Yanai, the creator of the project, declines to reveal which

toilet

is his favorite.

“It's like choosing your favorite son,” he argues, and in return he shares what he considers one of the main lessons: having become aware of the importance of cleaners and maintenance work.

“Even if it's a fantastic toilet designed by a famous creator, if it's not kept clean, people will naturally stay away from it,” he explains, linking the production of

Perfect Days

to his intention to show the people who work to keep toilets sparkling. .

Training with employees

To learn how to clean toilets equipped with integrated circuits and master the use of a hand mirror to facilitate inspection, the actor who plays Hirayama, Koji Yakusho, trained with employees of the company in charge of maintenance, Tokyo Sanitation.

The complexity of the design of TTT toilets and the variety of materials require the use of special methods, tools and, in some cases, detergents for each toilet, according to Haruhiko Watanabe, director of Tokyo Sanitation.

In Koji Yakusho's performance in

Perfect Days

, Watanabe praises the correct stance in performing a craft more familiar to older Japanese who were taught in school to regularly clean their own classrooms and bathrooms.

The best actor award for Koji Yakusho at Cannes and the Oscar nomination have been an unexpected success for a film that was born from an invitation to Wenders to create promotional content for TTT toilets.

Although the dissemination of the film is having a positive effect on the project, Yanai believes that the real success will be to generalize the hygienic use of this type of public bathrooms.

Aside from regular users, TTT's toilets are visited every day by architecture students and curious tourists, reinforcing the perception of Japan as an endless source of cultural surprises.

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