Streaming on multiple platforms, including Apple TV and Youtube.

in Japanese, with subtitles.

with Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto, Arisa Nakano, Ari Yamada.

Hirayama is a bookish sort. His apartment has rows of carefully sorted fiction. He is in the middle of reading Faulkner when the movie opens. Reading is how he ends each day, before falling asleep and dreaming in black and white. During the day, Hirayama fastidiously cleans toilets, the new ones that were installed in Tokyo, and make a New Yorker like me green with envy. They are pristine, beautifully designed, and cleaned every day by workers like Hirayama who is given the tools to do so. He is so careful, he uses a mirror to check underneath to make sure he has left nothing that could be called soiled.

The movie, which is punctuated by the playing of Hirayama’s collection of audiotapes of music from the 1960s and 1970s, follows Hirayama on day after day of his labor, his lunches, his off time. He does not say much, but he does not need to. It is clear that the man has a soul worth spending time with. He observes those around him. When he hears a small child in one of the toilets calling out for his mother, he goes in to retrieve him and return him to his mother. This is one of the most moving scenes in the movie. It shows Hirayama at his best, just doing what needs to be done. The movie made me think. It made me wonder, what is important in life? To have meaningful work? To tend to those who need you? To do good?

Hirayama has a young colleague, Takashi, who could not be more unlike him. Takashi does not really care for his job. He is trying to impress his girlfriend, Aya, who likes Hirayama’s tape of Patti Smith so much that she steals it. Takashi realizes that those tapes might be worth money, and he tries to get his colleague to sell them. But that would be wrong. The movie builds on each song that is played, starting with the House of the Rising Sun, and going on to Lou Reed’s Perfect Day.

Even though there is not much of a plot, there are episodes that give you a sense of the main character’s background. His niece, Niko (is this a reference to Nico of the Velvet Underground?) arrives unannounced, and settles in without explanation. Hirayama accepts her as she is, and takes her with him on his rounds. It is clear that she is comfortable with her uncle and looks up to him. As they exit the bathhouse where Hirayama brings her (since he has no real bathroom), a phone call leads to the retrieval of the girl by her mother. Rifts between brother and sister, and parents, bring pain.

As he moves on from Faulkner to Aya Kona and from there to Patricia Highsmith, there is anxiety afoot. An estranged husband visits his ex wife. Hirayama smokes again, for the first time in years. But somehow the mood lifts when he and the husband engage in a playful game of shadow tag.

The music of Nina Simone brings into focus how a life well lived does not need to include huge accomplishments, just an ability to perform your work well every day, to observe closely those around you, and to enjoy nature.

The cinematography is as pristine as Hirayama’s apartment. The editing has a fluidity that is lovely.

One of the things Hirayama does every day is to photograph the trees overhead, and to bring back home the developed prints, which he keeps in careful order inside boxes.

So are Hirayama’s perfect days stored.