Wim Wenders is making a movie about high-end public bogs in Japan that can have what the famend German director calls “social meaning” about folks in fashionable cities.
AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama
AP Photo/Hiro Komae, File
AP Photo/Hiro Komae, File
AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama
AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama
AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama
AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama
TOKYO (AP) — Wim Wenders is making a movie about high-end public bogs in Japan that can have what the famend German director calls “social meaning” about folks in fashionable cities.
“My first reaction was, I must admit: What? Toilets? Chotto mattene,” he stated Wednesday, utilizing the Japanese expression for “wait a minute”.
But then he started to see what the story could possibly be about.
“For me, they turned from toilets into restrooms. That’s a very nice word in English, the restroom. When I saw these places the next couple of days, I realized they were restrooms in the true sense of the word,” Wenders instructed reporters in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya district, the place the dozen public restrooms are situated.
The services have been designed by main architects together with Kengo Kuma and Tadao Ando, with the concept a pleasing public restroom might counter the frequent expectation it needed to be filthy, stuffed with graffiti or related to crime.
Wenders, the Oscar-winning director of “Wings of Desire” and “Buena Vista Social Club,” stated when he noticed the Shibuya loos, he was moved.
“This is a truly precious place,” Wenders stated.
And so his movie’s hero will probably be a sanitation employee who cleans the bogs, seeing his job as a craft and a service for the folks. Details of the script are nonetheless being labored out.
Koji Yakusho, recognized for enjoying the Japanese everyman in works like “Shall We Dance” and “Babel,” stated he accepted the function as quickly because it was provided as a result of he wished to work with Wenders.
“I have a feeling it’s going to be a beautiful story. And I feel a story that has the toilet as the setting, with the person who works there and the people who use it, will help lead to an understanding of Japan,” stated Yakusho.
The Tokyo Toilet challenge was initially conceived to impress international guests anticipated for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, earlier than the coronavirus pandemic compelled the occasions to happen with out spectators within the stands.
The public restroom designed by Ando is spherical with frames for the outside partitions, to permit air to flow into. In actual life it will get cleaned with out water to keep away from mould or decay by males in blue jumpsuits by Japanese designer Nigo.
The challenge, together with Wenders’ movie, has the backing of Fast Retailing, the corporate behind the Uniqlo clothes chain, and The Nippon Foundation, which carries out humanitarian initiatives utilizing income from boat racing.
Wenders stated his movie, regardless of its humble setting, will discover a profound idea.
“I almost think it’s a utopian idea because the toilet is a place where everybody is the same. There is no rich or poor, old or young. Everyone is part of humanity,” he stated.
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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
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