This movie is enjoyable in the same way that a yule log burning in a fireplace at Christmas is enjoyable. I expect you can put it on in the background as one makes dinner, glance over a few times, and not miss anything. There will not be much to add here about the movie itself, which is stripped down and focused in a way like Hirayama’s life. The Director Wim Wenders has decided to portray this story bereft of concerns like excitement or ambition. There is no arc for the character since he is without want. He likes things the way they are and they stay that way. It is all very zen.
And wouldn’t it be nice if we all could slow down and live a life like Hirayama’s. Well, too bad. The rest of this review will be a discussion of why his lifestyle is actually illegal in most of the world. Yes, the remainder of this review will be a discussion on zoning and public policy. You could show “Perfect Days” on the first day of a class on city planning and spend the rest of the semester discussing it. It portrays those things that are actually important to the daily lives of normal people, not the megalomaniacs that too often seek to dictate by fiat the way the rest of us live.
Let’s take Hirayama’s job first. He is a janitor that cleans public restrooms. Normally, this would be a disgusting and dangerous task. In New York City, we don’t have public restrooms because our inhabitants can’t handle them. But this takes place in Tokyo, where apparently not only are the public restrooms devoid of drug addicts, graffiti, and litter, but are themselves works of public art. These are some nice restrooms Hirayama is cleaning the toilets in. We will discuss further why Tokyo does not appear to have the undesirable elements of urban life living in its public spaces, but for now will just notice that they are not there.
Let’s consider where Hirayama lives. He lives alone in a studio apartment. He can afford a studio apartment on a janitor’s salary. In NYC this is what would be called movie magic. But again, this takes place in Tokyo. The development of the Tokyo metropolis is an extraordinary case study in what occurs if a government simply allows people to use their land in the manner they see fit. In other words, Tokyo developed from the ground up without much city planning or zoning. How this occurred highlights its extreme improbability and why very few other places in the world are like it.
There are many reasons given for zoning laws, but the ones that actually make the most sense is incumbency bias. Zoning exists because vested interests want to protect their property values. Put another way, people who already have what they want bend the rules to keep what they have. So, let’s say if you wanted your children to go to the best schools and interact with other people who have just as much money, you could live in a community where all the residences have a minimum value of middle class or more. This strategy has the practical effect of keeping all of the poor people out of the neighborhood. Taking it one step further, since the neighborhood schools prioritize students that live nearby and are funded by neighborhood property taxes, you can effectively provide your children an edge in better schools and better social networks by living in a neighborhood that only middle class or rich people can afford. This, in a nutshell, is suburbia and most of America lives there.
Japan before World War II was a deeply unequal place. But, one of the effects of a devastating war is that it dramatically reduced inequality amongst the Japanese people. When the Americans burned Japan to the ground, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. Many poor people lost all they owned. Many rich people also lost all they owned, but since they started off with more, they lost more. So far, so normal. Wars and other dramatic events like famines and plagues decrease inequality. But what happened next really has no historical parallel. The United States deposed the imperial government of Japan in an unconditional surrender. This dramatically reduced political inequality to go with the dramatic reduction of economic inequality caused by the war itself. Then instead of looting, enslaving, and colonizing the country, it installed democracy and capitalism and left. So Japan in general, and Tokyo in particular is an extraordinary natural experiment: what occurs when vested interests are removed and replaced with an open society. Forty years later, Japan had the second largest economy in the world.
How does this affect our hero Hirayama? Well, since Tokyo was allowed to develop as much as the free market dictated, there isn’t this dramatic shortage of housing that exists everywhere else in the world. Tokyo is an ocean of development, as densely packed as the island of Manhattan as far as the eye can see. As a result, a janitor can afford a studio. Another important detail. Hirayama’s studio apartment doesn’t have a full bathroom. Hirayama patronizes a nearby public spa to bathe. In NYC and most of the United States, that is illegal. Every living space requires a bathroom, electricity and a kitchen. That is nice I’m sure, but it makes the apartment more expensive. And when the living space is too expensive for poor people to live in, they live in tents on the street without bathrooms, electricity, or kitchens. You thought you could get rid of poor people by removing cheap housing, but all you did was remove the cheap housing. The poor people persist in their existence.
(I recall reading about Ernest Hemingway living as an underemployed writer in Paris, France in the 1920s. How could he afford it? Well, for one thing, his apartment didn’t have running water. Would you trade running water to live as an underemployed writer in Paris in the 1920s? Or how about being able to live like Hirayama in Tokyo? To be poor and live alone in NYC is either impossible or requires a government handout, which is as bad as living with the government in your home. Something to contemplate about NYC is that all people here have the right to shelter. So there exists a shelter system that every single person living on the street could take advantage of. The homeless you see on the street choose to be there.)
Let’s consider where Hirayama spends his time. The ramen spot that he patronizes. The bookstore that he buys novels from. The record store that sells him his mix-tapes. The tiny bar that he drinks at. All of these places are run by middle-aged or older operators. What does that infer? It infers that the owners are working at their own shops. Tokyo allows these tiny stores to exist by allowing commercial spaces in places that are forbidden elsewhere. In Irvine, all shopping and residences are separated. And the only shopping you can do is confined to malls that, by design, have one owner. So, in effect, by developing the neighborhood in this way, it ensures that the physical marketplace is monopolized by one entity. This has the effect of dramatically raising the rents for stores in the mall. After all, you’ve unnaturally made commercial space scarce by rendering it illegal in all areas that are not within the mall. So only big companies can afford to rent space in the mall, which means that you can’t have these small independently owned stores that Hirayama patronizes in Tokyo. It’s nice to know the owners of an establishment. If it is a ramen spot, the owner remembers you and says hello. If it is a bookstore, the owner talks to you about books. If it is a bar, the bartender knows what you like to drink. And if you plan your town so that it is difficult for normal people to own the places that they work, you don’t have this type of interaction.
When he is not working, Hirayama rides his bicycle around Tokyo. The places that he patronizes are close enough in space where this is not inconvenient. When Hirayama comes to his destination, he does not lock up his bike. What? What alternate dimension is this where one does not take the basic precaution of locking up one’s bicycle? This is the one detail that I’m not sure is actually correct about “Perfect Days” depiction of Tokyo, but it does reflect a general truth about Japan. It is an abnormally safe place to live. In a country of 125 million, there were 912 recorded homicides in 2023. That is absurdly low. It is this sort of detail which allows Hirayama to live his type of life without the stress and anxiety that surrounds the poor in the rest of the world. At one point, he decides to relax by drinking beer under a bridge. It is a nice place to drink and there are no hostile people around. Would you drink beer under a bridge in your town?
One can point to stringent gun sales for low crime, which helps but isn’t the real reason why crime is so low. The real reason is that Japan is democratic, capitalist (i.e. has the rule of law), relatively old, and entirely composed of Japanese (like 99% of the people are natives). There isn’t anything special about the Japanese people. Take any other group of people and give them the same institutions and demography and that country too would be peaceful. What the low crime rate reflects is strong community ties. What enables strong community ties is a stable population and time. Japan has almost no immigration or foreign born population. Everyone is Japanese and their families have lived there forever. Over time, this fosters a very strong sense of community identity which is reflected in the fact that the public spaces (including the bathrooms) respect the people and the people respect the public spaces (including the bathrooms).
It is not that immigrants are inherently wild people. It is the fact that they are new, which in turn renders their portion of the population transient. Over time, community ties will form, but community ties are simply not there when the people show up. If you have a prolonged and large influx of people and/or large exodus of people, say like what happened in American cities in the 1970s and 1980s, communities that did have strong ties can break down and dissipate entirely, one side effect being an extraordinary rise in crime. There are benefits to diversity and immigration that are especially noticeable when one considers the example of Japan. Its aging population and workforce, its stagnating economy, its conformist and potentially oppressive culture would all be helped with more immigration. If it allowed more immigration, it would come with a crime wave. The question is at what point does the trade off stop being worth it. Immigration is not a question of yes or no, it is a question of how much.
There is much to learn about the good life by contemplating “Perfect Days”. In the context of city planning, one realizes that although Hirayama lives alone, his life is made possible by the people and community of Tokyo, who in their wisdom have decided to enact laws that are uncommon and to not enact other laws that are common. Now, I’m not saying we all have to live the zen life. All I’m saying is that it shouldn’t be illegal.
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