Art Perfect Days: Yakusho Kōji wins Best Actor Award

"I love awards, but I don't really like giving speeches at the Cannes Film Festival, which is such a spectacular event," he said, prompting laughter. He repeatedly expressed his gratitude to the jurors, film director and staff. This is the first time in 19 years that a Japanese actor has won the award since Yuya Yagira, who earned it for his role in "Nobody Knows" in 2004 when he was 14 years old. Yakusho jokingly said in an interview, "I wonder if I have finally caught up with Yagira. "I must work hard not to disgrace this award," he added.

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Hirayama seems utterly content with his simple life as a cleaner of toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his very structured everyday routine he enjoys his passion for music and for books. And he loves trees and takes photos of them. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveal more of his past. A deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us.

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If the intense buzz in Japan is anything to go by, the film has a good chance of winning. But why is this story, in which Yakusho's character Hirayama devotes more than half his screen time to cleaning public park toilets, so riveting? The reason is an enigma, like a conversation with a Zen Buddhist priest that leaves the interlocutor full of questions but infused with a strange serenity. If you have never been inside a Japanese public toilet, the film will be a revelation. Equipped with diaper-changing tables and makeup nooks, warmed seats, electronic bidets and automated basins that hands never need to touch, they are, quite often, sanctums of peace and hygiene. This was especially so during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the ground-floor toilets of many closed office buildings remained open to anyone who wished to use them.

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