The star of Tampopo, Babel and The Eel reveals how it felt to share the screen with 17 stunning Tokyo lavatories in this joyously strange, Oscar-tipped film about a cleaner

Not all movie heroes wear capes, it is said, but only the rare, cherished few don rubber gloves and blue overalls. Perfect Days, the gorgeous new drama from the German director Wim Wenders, is about one such man of action: a lone wolf in crowded modern-day Japan. Middle-aged Hirayama is employed by Tokyo Toilet and drives a small van from one public convenience to the next. Like Travis Bickle and Dirty Harry, he’s on a mission to clean up the city. Unlike them, Hirayama means literally: he comes with brushes, squeegees and detergent.

Hirayama is played by Kōji Yakusho, a 68-year-old mainstay of Japanese cinema with approximately 100 screen credits to his name. He was the mysterious diner in the 1980s hit Tampopo, the anguished father in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel, and a penitent killer in the Palme d’Or-winning drama The Eel. But he has never been involved in such a curious project as this one, nor seen a film spark and explode to quite this degree. He won the best actor award at last year’s Cannes film festival, and Perfect Days now stands a chance of lifting the best international film Oscar. Yakusho – in his serene, rueful fashion – is still making sense of it all.