Wim Wenders traveled to Udine to personally present Yakusho Koji with the Golden Mulberry Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 28th Far East Film Festival on Saturday, using the occasion to describe how their collaboration on “Perfect Days” quietly abandoned the conventions of fiction filmmaking.
Wenders, who cast Yakusho as the taciturn Tokyo toilet cleaner Hirayama in the 2023 Cannes prize-winner, told the assembled audience he would not have made the journey for anyone else. He then traced a turning point that came on the third day of shooting.
“He had transcended the part,” Wenders said, explaining that what Yakusho showed him in early rehearsals had already exceeded what the script envisioned. He asked the actor whether they could proceed directly to camera without rehearsing – unconventional on a fiction film – and Yakusho agreed.
From that point, Wenders said, he found himself applying documentary discipline to a scripted story. “He was so much Hirayama that I didn’t dare do a second shot. Like if you do a documentary, you don’t say to the people, ‘Come again, we need to do one more shot.’ You shoot a documentary – that’s the rule – and what you shoot is the truth.”
“I don’t even know if this has ever been done in the history of cinema – to shoot fiction as if it was documentary,” Wenders added. “And you allowed me to do that. This prize cannot even express what an actor you are.”
“Perfect Days” was co-written by Wenders and Takasaki Takuma, who was present at the ceremony. The film earned Yakusho the best actor prize at Cannes.
Accepting the award, Yakusho reflected on nearly five decades in the profession. “This is my 48th year as an actor,” he said, expressing gratitude to his family, friends, and the filmmakers and audiences around the world who had shaped his career.
“My encounter with director Wim Wenders taught me the possibilities of cinema and was, for me, an especially significant event,” he added, before thanking the festival for creating the occasion.
The Golden Mulberry is the highest honor awarded by the Far East Film Festival, held annually in Udine with a focus on popular Asian cinema. The tribute program accompanying Yakusho’s award comprised seven films personally approved by the actor, with the festival noting that his participation marked a highlight in the event’s 28-year history.
Yakusho, 70, has been a defining presence in Japanese cinema for four decades, working across crime thrillers, historical epics, and international co-productions. His long collaboration with director Kurosawa Kiyoshi – encompassing films including “Cure” and “Doppelganger” – is among the most sustained actor-director partnerships in contemporary Japanese film. He has also appeared in Itami Juzo’s “Tampopo,” Imamura Shohei’s Palme d’Or-winning “The Eel,” Suo Masayuki’s “Shall We Dance,” and Miike Takashi’s “13 Assassins,” among many others.
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