Until a late change of mind, Wim Wenders’ Oscar-nominated, Japanese-language feature Perfect Days was titled Komorebi. “I didn’t know the Japanese had a word for something that, in our language, we need a couple of lines to explain,” says Wenders, the 78-year-old German director behind Wings of Desire, Alice in the Cities, and Paris, Texas. “It’s very specific.”

In short, “komorebi” refers to the refraction of light at multiple angles when the sun shines through swaying leaves. More precisely, it signifies that particular moment in time: a shadowy snapshot; a miracle of nature never to be repeated in that exact fashion. “It gives you a special feeling because nobody created it,” says Wenders. “It’s just the sun, the wind, and trees. It’s a one-time thing, and very precious.”

Wenders, though, is a famed auteur whose decades of iconic, often semi-improvised features have captured his own version of “komorebi”. In Wings of Desire, Kings of the Road, and Alice in the Cities, it’s Robby Muller’s grainy, black-and-white cinematography; the glimpses of the sky as the camera impulsively turns upwards in awe. In The American Friend and Paris, Texas, it’s the blinding sunlight or haunting neon signs at night that you just know were discovered on location that day. More recently, it’s Anselm, a documentary that uses 3D technology to manipulate the direction of light in a pitch-black screening room.

Wenders’ filmography can admittedly be hit and miss, but when it hits, it truly hits. Today, I’m speaking to Wenders in Covent Garden Hotel in late January, just less than an hour before it’s announced that Perfect Days will compete for the Best International Feature Film Oscar. While Wenders has previously shot in Japan (two documentaries, a chunk of Until the End of the World), Perfect Days marks his first fiction feature set entirely in the country. Starring Kōji Yakusho as a toilet cleaner who adopts a minimalist lifestyle, the komorebi-filled drama was embraced enough by Japan that they selected it for their Oscar submission over acclaimed alternatives by Hayao Miyazaki and Hirokazu Kore-eda.

In 2020, Wenders was invited to shoot a non-fiction film about the Tokyo Toilet Project, an initiative in which 17 forward-thinking public toilets were designed by famed architects. “I felt like a documentary would be a waste of time,” Wenders says. “When I came to Tokyo the first week after the longest lockdown in history, it felt great to see people treat the city, the parks, and the streets with so much respect, and not like in Europe where people returned from the pandemic and had lost their sense of the common good. There was this feeling with the pandemic that we might live differently afterwards. Hirayama lives with such reduced means that it gives him freedom.”

In Perfect Days, which Wenders cowrote with Takuma Takasaki, the toilets are remarkably clean – sometimes before Hirayama diligently scrubs them even further. Was Wenders trying not to gross out the audience? “In general, people [in Japan] leave the toilets behind so that other people won’t be appalled,” he says. “If you travel around the world, you see the way people treat toilets. Toilets can be part of a country’s culture – or non-culture.”

One example in Perfect Days is of a line of cubicles on the pavement with transparent walls that allow pedestrians to know the toilets’ cleanliness and if they’re occupied; when a door is locked, the walls turn opaque. In contrast, the streets of Soho smell increasingly of urine. “I’ve found myself in London trying to find a pub where I can take a leak, because I’ve never found any public toilet,” says Wenders. “The problem is that public toilets need people to service them. In Japan, it’s not seen as the lowest job on the ladder; if you’re a service person, you get respect.”

For the first half of Perfect Days, Hirayama cleans toilets by day, then relaxes in the evening with analogue pleasures: second-hand books, cassette tapes, non-phone photography. What disrupts his precise routine – it’s not dissimilar to Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson – is the arrival of a young, chatty niece who joins him at work and home. Even then, Hirayama takes pride in his job. “Koji made him so real,” says Wenders. “It felt like we were doing a documentary on a fictional character.”

One of Wenders’ first trips to Japan was to shoot the 1985 documentary Tokyo-Ga, a celebration of Yasujirō Ozu in which Wenders’ voiceover gushes over Tokyo’s hypnotic power – until the midpoint when Werner Herzog arrives and rants at length about how “no images” are possible amidst the city’s skyscrapers. Wenders reveals that Herzog watched Tokyo-Ga for the first time two weeks ago. “Werner said he’d waited 40 years because he had the feeling he’d said something stupid. I told him it was beautiful in the context of the film.” Not only has Herzog taken back his claim, he’s also watched Perfect Days four times. “I must admit, I don’t think I’ve seen any of his films four times,” says Wenders. “He must’ve liked it.”

“Hirayama struck a chord. People want to live with less clutter in their lives... Maybe the film wouldn’t have hit a nerve last year or next year; the mood found the right time” – Wim Wenders

On Tokyo-Ga, the cinematographer was Ed Lachman; on Perfect Days, it was Franz Lustig. When I ask if Wenders considered hiring a Japanese director of photography to lessen the western gaze, he explains that Lustig, a trusted collaborator, was required for a shoot scheduled for only 16 days. “Time was of the essence, and Franz knows exactly where the camera has to be. We spent a whole day inside the apartment to study how the light was coming in, and how to enhance it.”

As for shooting another film in Japan, Wenders initially expresses enthusiasm. “Then again, I never want to repeat myself. I wouldn’t do a sequel to Perfect Days. It would have to be very different.” Perhaps in 3D? “It could very well be. My films start with a sense of place. Here, it was the toilets, and then I found the story. My next film would first need the place that wants me – the place that wants me to find the one and only story that could happen there.”

With our interview ending, Wenders reveals that he’s going out for lunch – he’s not watching a live stream of the Oscars announcement. In addition to its awards attention, Perfect Days has proven successful with critics and the international box office. “Somehow, Hirayama struck a chord. People want to live with less clutter in their lives. He’s genuinely content with his days. Maybe the film wouldn’t have hit a nerve last year or next year; the mood found the right time.”

He marvels at how, in Europe, Perfect Days is playing in cinemas alongside blockbusters. “That’s never happened to me in my life. A little bit with Paris, Texas, but that’s a long time ago. Buena Vista Social Club did it in a strange way because people were ready to rediscover Cuban music. But it’s luck. If studios knew that beforehand, nobody would produce a flop anymore. Wouldn’t that be terrible? I’m so happy everybody can fail. Me too.”

Perfect Days is out in UK cinemas on February 23