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Koichi Nishi: They tamed my father and you with scraps from their table and offered you up as scapegoats, yet you can't hate them. This is the only message scum like them understand. Even now they sleep well, grins on their faces.
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Construction Company President Hatano: A man with a full stomach doesn't bother with snacks.
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Tatsuo Iwabuchi: [to Nishi about his father who is cooking barbeque wearing an apron] He hardly looks the part of a bad guy.
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Assistant-to-the-Chief Wada: I met the young lady twice while planning the wedding. She's a genuinely sweet person. When I think of her agony, I wish a peaceful resolution were possible.
Itakura: Unfortunately there just isn't any way. That man's evil! If we hesitate, we're finished.
-
Administrative Officer Moriyama: [imprisoned inside a locked room] Cut the crap! You've starved me for two whole days!
Koichi Nishi: Would you like to eat?
Administrative Officer Moriyama: Of course!
Koichi Nishi: We haven't got much to offer. You like ham and eggs on toast?
Administrative Officer Moriyama: Anything!
Koichi Nishi: [opening up the locked door and showing him the pan of food] Ham and eggs on toast will run you 15 million.
Administrative Officer Moriyama: 15 million?
Koichi Nishi: Surely you're not shocked! 'Always get a kickback!' That's your policy, isn't it?
-
[Nishi drives Wada to the funeral service- his own. Nishi wipes the rain from the windscreen so Wada can look. Wada peers over the dashboard. It is really a magnificent funeral, with wreaths, candles, a picture of him mounted on the top of a wonderful display, and co-workers bowing solemnly. Wada is aghast to find his wife and daughter at the funeral]
Assistant-to-the-Chief Wada: Why... why are you doing this to me? This is sheer torment! I'd rather be dead!
[He begins to sob]
Assistant-to-the-Chief Wada: Please, let me die. I have to die! Wasting this fine funeral-!
Koichi Nishi: Calm down, now. There's something I want you to hear. You've been to Noir, right? The bar run by Moriyama's mistress?
[He takes out a large tape recorder, disguised as a valise]
Koichi Nishi: This is Moriyama and Shirai talking there last night.
Contract Officer Shirai: [over the tape recorder] What, you came to this kind of place? And so soon after getting married?
Koichi Nishi: [over tape recorder] You've caught me red handed. I'm ready for a dance.
Administrative Officer Moriyama: [over tape recorder] Now, now. No need to rush off.
[Moriyama and Shirai laugh]
Koichi Nishi: [to Wada] That's when I placed a briefcase with this tape recorder inside it under their table.
[He shuts the tape off]
Koichi Nishi: I'll play their conversation for you after they arrive at the funeral.
[He starts whistling a tune]
-
Public Corporation President Arimura: Nishi's future prospects glow brightly indeed. As for his lovely bride, Yoshiko, she is a talented alumna of Keitoku Girls School and is not only exquisite, but also a rare paragon of unsullied innocence.
-
Tatsuo Iwabuchi: Traditionally, in making a wedding toast, we stick to the same old sugarcoated clichés. Frankly, my father isn't crazy about aspects of Nishi's past outlined in a detective agency's report. But then it's not my father who's getting married.
-
Tatsuo Iwabuchi: Nishi, I'm counting on you to look after my sister. She's had a tough life. I may be a mess, but I'd do anything to protect her. Listen, Nishi, if you make my sister unhappy, I swear I'll kill you!
-
Koichi Nishi: You've become a real lapdog, haven't you? You'd kill yourself just because Moriyama and Shirai told you to. Those masters you so loyally serve are celebrating even now. To Iwabuchi, Moriyama and Shirai, you're just a nuisance, a walking liability they want to be rid of. But listen to me: Cattle and swine die kinder deaths!
-
Public Corporation Vice President Iwabuchi: What drove these two men to their deaths? Why don't you ask the prosecutor's office for the truth?
-
Koichi Nishi: Time to go.
Assistant-to-the-Chief Wada: Where?
Koichi Nishi: Your funeral. I just dropped off an offering on behalf of Iwabuchi and the firm. The've put on quite a show. A five tier altar, three priests, and two huge wreaths courtesy of Public Corp.
Assistant-to-the-Chief Wada: A beautiful funeral. I knew it.
-
Administrative Officer Moriyama: Get yourself a young girl, the best remedy for a day like today.
-
Yoshiko Nishi: Drinking so early?
Tatsuo Iwabuchi: Did you see the papers? Makes me feel like crap.
Yoshiko Nishi: A drunk needs no excuse to drink.
-
Koichi Nishi: Our work is done for tonight. Isn't it fun playing a ghost?
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Koichi Nishi: It wasn't easy leaping into a snake pit like this.
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Koichi Nishi: I guess I don't hate them enough.
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Koichi Nishi: It's not easy hating evil. You have to stoke your own fury until you become evil yourself.
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Mrs. Furuya: I never dreamed that time would change my feelings.
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Tatsuo Iwabuchi: Yoshiko, he's using you. You're just a pawn for his vengeance.
-
Yoshiko Nishi: My father, is he really such a bad person? Please, tell me the truth. Tatsuo sometimes says the same thing. Is that really what Father is like?
[Koichi turns away]
Yoshiko Nishi: So, it's true then. But he's always been a wonderful father to me.
-
Itakura: How can this be? How can this be?
-
Public Corporation Vice President Iwabuchi: Good night, then.
[realizing it it's daytime]
Public Corporation Vice President Iwabuchi: Oh, my mistake. I didn't sleep at all last night and seem to have mistaken night for day.
-
[Tatsuo and Yoshiko find Itakura sobbing in Nishi's hideout. Itakura sees them and rushes to them]
Itakura: It was you, wasn't it? You told them where Nishi was.
[Yoshiko nods]
Itakura: Congratulations. Thanks to you, Nishi's been murdered.
Tatsuo Iwabuchi: Don't blame her. Our father tricked her into telling.
Itakura: [grimacing] Tricked her, did he? Now all of Japan can be tricked the same way. You must have seen it on your way here. That car flattened into scrap by a freight train. NISHI WAS IN THAT CAR!
[Tatsuo and Yoshiko cringe]
Itakura: You don't believe me? I'll show you, then.
[He tries to grab Yoshiko]
Itakura: I'll show you what they did to him! Look!
[He shows a bunch of tools on the ground]
Itakura: The signs of his last stand against them! There's more.
[He shoves them into a room]
Itakura: Take a close look. The bottle of alcohol and the broken syringe. I think... No, I'm positive. Nishi... They pinned Nishi down. Then...
[He demonstrates by shoving the syringe into an old coat in a corner of the room]
Itakura: They shot him full of grain alcohol. Then they dumped him into the car I left as a precaution, and aimed him, unconscious, toward the tracks. Drunk driving. His sense of justice and all his hard work will be consigned to oblivion and his name dragged in the mud!
[Yoshiko faints]
Tatsuo Iwabuchi: Yoshiko! Yoshiko!
[Tatsuo hugs her tightly]
Itakura: You're Tatsuo, right?
[He sits in the rubble]
Itakura: I'm Itakura. Actually, my real name's Nishi. But now I can't ever go back to being myself. Hey, listen. The car Nishi died in was mine. It was registered to Nishi. So Nishi died in Nishi's car. I'm Itakura now. I can't testify to anything.
[He starts crying again]
Itakura: How can this be? Nishi was murdered last night. That much is certain. Yet, even though it's a fact... There's nothing I can do about it!
[He sobs into the coat]
Itakura: They killed Wada, too.
Tatsuo Iwabuchi: Wada?
Itakura: Wada, the assistant. He was here last night, but now he's gone. He was already thought to be dead. Easy enough to get rid of him. And Moriyama, who spilled his guts last night, they took him away, too. By now they've probably destroyed all material evidence. I know everything. It's horrifying that it's all so simple and yet so foul!
[He cries once more]
Itakura: But I don't have a single shred of evidence! There's nothing I can say! Nothing I can do! Goddamn it! How can this be? HOW CAN THIS BE?
The Bad Sleep Well Quotes
Extended Reading
