Which Shakespeare play is an uncredited basis for The Bad Sleep Well? The film draws on Hamlet. Akira Kurosawa relocates the play’s themes of filial revenge, hidden wrongdoing, and moral corruption from a royal court to a postwar Japanese corporation.
Toshiro Mifune plays Kōichi Nishi, a young executive who marries into the family of a powerful company vice president while secretly investigating the circumstances of his father’s death. Like Hamlet, the story revolves around a son confronting a corrupt order and seeking the truth behind a suspicious death.
The connection is uncredited and loose rather than a scene-by-scene adaptation. Kurosawa’s film also reflects American film noir and contemporary Japanese concerns about corporate corruption. The film’s title, often translated as “The Bad Sleep Well,” points toward the moral world in which powerful wrongdoers appear secure while others pay the price.
Kurosawa’s more explicit Shakespeare adaptations are Throne of Blood, based on Macbeth, and Ran, based on King Lear. That distinction causes occasional mix-ups, but The Bad Sleep Well is most commonly identified with Hamlet’s underlying story and dramatic structure.