Could Tokyo’s public toilets help Japan win an Oscar?

In a scene from Perfect Days – the latest film by Wim Wenders, released in Italian theaters in early January – a foreign woman tries to understand how one of the public toilets of the Tokyo Toilet Project works, asking for help from the protagonist, a janitor. The bathroom in question has walls made of colored and transparent glass, which only become opaque when the door is locked. The work was created by one of the leading Japanese architects, Ban Shigeru – the idea behind the project is that, in this way, it is possible to immediately understand if the toilets are occupied, and you can also check their cleanliness before entering. In Tokyo, public toilets are considered essential – well-maintained, free, and easy to find (for example, they are present in every subway station). But to understand how serious these services are for the city, you need to specifically consider the toilets of the Tokyo Toilet Project, located in the Shibuya district, one of the largest and most well-known. These structures have become very recognizable thanks to their refined and unconventional architectural style. A good part of the charm of Perfect Days – which is being highly appreciated by critics and the public – is precisely due to these toilets, which also allowed the film itself to be made. Originally, in fact, what is now a fictional film – in the Oscar shortlist for Best Foreign Film – was supposed to be a documentary, commissioned to Wim Wenders by the Tokyo Toilet Project to tell the story of these unique toilets.

Why Perfect Days Owes Everything to the Tokyo Toilet Project

Likely alongside Leaves in the Wind (Aki Kaurismaki; Finland), The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer; UK), and I, Captain (Matteo Garrone; Italy), Perfect Days, Japan's candidate, is expected to be in the top five for Best International Feature Film at the 2024 Academy Awards, taking place in March and concluding the film festival season. The last Oscar won by the country was in 2022. Wenders' film is set precisely in the Japanese capital and tells the simple daily life of a tender janitor of the Tokyo Toilet Project. The main actor, Koji Yakusho, won the award for Best Actor at the last Cannes Film Festival – to get into the role, he worked for several days with the janitors of the Tokyo Toilet Project. According to Wenders, these bathrooms not only had great architectural value but in their own way encapsulated various aspects of Japanese culture – and that's exactly why he preferred to make a fictional film rather than a documentary. Speaking of the Tokyo Toilet Project toilets, the German director said that, in addition to their "absolute architectural beauty," they represent "the strong sense of 'service' and 'common good' in Japan. [...] I was surprised by how much they can be a part of local daily culture." Wenders was initially involved in this project thanks to his close relationship with Japan – in the late 1980s, for example, he made a documentary about the designer Yohji Yamamoto, titled Travel Notes on Fashion and City.

The Tokyo Toilet Project, on the other hand, was launched in 2018 with the aim of encouraging the use of public toilets in the city, while at the same time discouraging the idea that they are dirty and dangerous places. The idea came from Koji Yanai, president of the company Fast Retailing, which owns Uniqlo – the brand indeed collaborated in the production of Perfect Days. The initiative was then supported by a well-known Japanese charity foundation, which involved a series of famous architects, asking them to design more than 15 new public toilets in the Shibuya area. However, in addition to being as accessible as possible, these structures had to have a strong aesthetic connotation and