Perfect Days was originally suggested to you as a tribute to an architectural project in Tokyo’s Shibuya district that redesigned public toilets to look beautiful. How did it evolve into a feature? I realised I wasn’t going to make photographs with these toilets. And I also wasn’t going to make a documentary. If I wanted to make a film, it was a film about Tokyo at that moment. And the toilets would be great to have as background. It was gonna be a fictional story, and it had to be somebody who symbolised that idea of the common good. And I suggested it was a cleaning man, a caretaker for these toilets.

How did you choose Koji Yakusho for the lead? Takuma [Takasaki, co-writer] brought up Koji Yakusho. And I took a deep breath because I had seen him at first in Shall We Dance; I’d seen the film three times in a row. I’d also seen Babel and loved his performance. I knew who that man was. And I said ‘are you serious? Do you think I can make a film with him?’ And he said ‘yes. We already called him and he said “if Wim wants to make a film and accepts me, then I’ll be there.”’ 

Koji won Best Actor in Cannes. Did you talk to him afterwards? Afterwards we had a party and I was so happy. If you’re invited to come back, you will win a prize, but you don’t know which one. And the Japanese were all excited. I said ‘I know which prize. There’s only one prize we can win. And that’s Best Actor. And if that happens, I’m a happy camper. Then I think we have accomplished our film because he is the soul of the film.’ And he got it. And they all looked at me as if I was a prophet!

How do you relate to Hirayama, a man who seems very content with his simple life? Hirayama is the man I have inside me who has enough of everything and doesn’t need more. He never has the feeling he misses anything.

The film features the Lou Reed song ‘Perfect Day’. What does Reed’s music mean to you? The Velvet Underground saved my life. In a book about their songs, I wrote about why ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ really saved my life. Anyway, it’s in the film. And ‘Perfect Day’ is also there and Lou Reed is a mighty voice in the film. 

It’s also a real nod to analogue music, with Hirayama playing his beloved classic rock on cassettes. Are they making a comeback? A lot of young people give everything for a Walkman and pay incredible prices for vintage cassettes. And there are whole shops where you can buy cassette equipment, cassette recorders and blank tapes. The hottest thing now is compilation tapes: what I did for 20 years, because it was like letter writing . . . it was music and it had a shape because there was a beginning and an end. It was like an LP; they were made with an order. Now music comes out and you don’t know what the order is because the playlist doesn’t have an order, you can play it any way you want. So people have rediscovered the idea of the compilation. And in youth culture the hottest shit right now is audio cassettes.

Talking of music, how big is your vinyl collection? About 20,000.

You’ve made several documentaries about artists, including the recent Anselm. What if someone wanted to make one about you? Oh no, I don’t want a film about myself! Actually, I’m fine without it. Somebody made a film about me a few years ago; it was more about my American years and was called Desperado. Actually, it’s not a bad film. And it made me feel a lot about what an actor has to do. Because they took me to the very place where Paris, Texas started; the camera finds this lonely man in the desert . . . that’s where Desperado starts, and I’m standing in the place where Harry Dean [Stanton was]. It took us days to find it. It’s called the Devil’s Playground.

You won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Paris, Texas. What do you remember? I remember that when I got the Golden Palm from Dirk Bogarde, he gave me a big hug and he had tears in his eyes. And he said ‘we loved the film’. He said not ‘I’ but ‘we’ . . . ‘And we decided unanimously’. I thought that was beautiful.
Perfect Days in in cinemas from Friday 23 February.