Casino-themed artworks have fascinated audiences for centuries, portraying the allure, tension, and drama of gambling scenes. They capture the high stakes and human emotions of the games of chance, from cool thrill to hot despair, from the appearance of deceit to deep camaraderie. We discuss seven iconic pieces of art that have become casino masterpieces.
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1. The Cardsharps by Caravaggio (circa 1594)
The Cardsharps is one of the very first and most influential casino-themed artworks. The two cheats plotting against the naive young man in this painting are nowhere to be seen. One does the cheapskate whole numbers behind his back, and the other does the signals for the move.
Сhiassaro’s use of light and shadow, or chiaroscuro, gives the scene a tremendous sense of tension heightening it. In this, it’s a masterful piece of depiction of deception and how humans are suckers for gambling. This piece has done a great job of creating timeless classics due to the richness of its storytelling.
2. The Card Players by Paul Cézanne (1890-1895)
The 5 paintings of Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players represent Provençal peasants playing cards. Similar to most gambling-themed art that emphasizes the drama, many highs and very lows, Cézanne’s players are cool and stoic, and likely treat the game as a routine pastime.
With these paintings, the simple and authentic condition of rural life is documented, along with an observant attitude toward gambling as a social phenomenon. The Card Players was sold in one of the most expensive artworks ever sold, for a staggering $250 million to the State of Qatar. Cézanne’s geometric use of colors and tones cast his genius in painting everyday.
3. Dogs Playing Poker by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1903)
Dogs Playing Poker is probably one of the most iconic and joking artworks ever done. This series is a series of anthropomorphized dogs that are so deeply involved in playing poker that they are painted by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge. There are the cunning cheater, the overconfident player, the excitable terrier, the unwilling pursuer, and the out-of-his-helmet high flyer.
Since then these paintings have developed into a cultural phenomenon, though they were originally intended to be advertisements for cigars. The underlying contest is of humor, with an even more sobering commentary on human behavior, about the absurdity and ultimately seriousness of gambling. Despite their fun nature, Dogs Playing Poker taps into the universality of cards and how they just make for good entertainment, even if it’s drawing a crowd.
4. At the Roulette Table in Monte Carlo by Edvard Munch (1892)
Best known perhaps for The Scream, Edvard Munch gives expressionism its warped twist in the form of At the Roulette Table in Monte- Carlo. Munch was inspired by his own experiences of gambling and recreates the anxiety, tension, and emotional élan of the roulette table players.
That is where the vibrant colors and distorted figures work to paint the psychological effect of gambling — where one minute you’re rich, and the next you’re poor. It is a deeply relatable and evocative piece because Munch’s painting paints the highs and lows of the casino-going experience. The reminder of the intoxicating, but often destructive nature of chance.
5. Salon d’Or, Homburg by William Powell Frith (1871)
Like Salon d’Or, Homburg takes viewers into the opulent interior of the Bad Homburg casino in Germany. It is a lively tableau of 19th-century society in which patrons from all walks of life are absorbed in games of chance.
Frith is amazing in detail and the elegance and decadence of the age into the detail. Every element in it tells a story — from the gamblers all dressed in riches, to the unsuspecting onlookers bursting with eager anticipation. We see how in this artwork the casino is a microcosm of society where different people live, and have different kinds of wealth, different ambitions, and levels of desperation, but they come inside and interact with each other on a common ground.
Conclusion
In these five artworks, we see how artists have presented the theme of gambling in varied fashions. Each piece presents a singular, unique perspective on the world of casinos from Caravaggio’s dramatic chiaroscuro and Cézanne’s contemplative realism through contemporary sculpture. However, casinos have also inspired many forms of art in the modern world, including movies, games, and more.
These masterpieces use humor, tension, and drama to deal with the apparently inherent complexities of human behavior, which themselves can be brought about by games of chance. The casino is forever timeless, whether these artworks are celebrated or used as a critique, they still strike the heart of this age-old theme.
Memory rarely returns as a complete image. More often, it appears as something partial and unstable, a residue that hovers between presence and disappearance. It can feel light, translucent, almost atmospheric, like mist suspended between what is remembered and what can no longer be reached. Rather than belonging solely to the past, memory continually folds into the present, reshaping perception as it lingers.
It is within this uncertain terrain that Qingran Liu’s artistic practice takes shape. Working across textiles and moving image, Liu approaches memory not as something to be reconstructed or narrated, but as an experience activated through material, perception, and bodily proximity. Her works do not offer memory as evidence; instead, they stage memory as a condition, fragile, unstable, and perpetually in motion.
Liu’s practice consistently resists linear storytelling. Instead, it unfolds through sensory encounters shaped by duration, repetition, and natural rhythms. Textile, a medium that is simultaneously soft and rigorously structured, becomes central to this approach. Within her installations, memory is not retrieved as a fixed record but emerges through processes of distortion, interruption, and reassembly. The emotional register of her work is restrained and introspective, leaving space for hesitation rather than resolution.
Much of Liu’s work occupies the threshold between image and fabric. Fragile yarns intersect with fragmented photographic imagery, producing surfaces that seem to waver between legibility and dissolution. She works primarily with a Dubied industrial knitting machine, whose mechanical precision establishes a disciplined underlying structure. Against this rational framework, the yarn introduces vulnerability: threads shift, misalign, or partially disappear, generating visual instability that resists permanence. The image never fully settles; it remains contingent on light, distance, and the viewer’s position.
Rather than treating the machine as a neutral tool, Liu positions it as an active mediator between logic and sensation. The ordered system of industrial knitting becomes a site of tension, where deviation carries emotional weight. Textile, in this context, is neither purely structural nor purely expressive, it exists in a quiet negotiation between control and fragility, calculation and intuition.
Within contemporary textile and image-based practices, Liu’s work may initially recall artists who translate photography into fabric. Yet where such practices often emphasise layering or sculptural density, Liu moves in the opposite direction. Her works cultivate flatness, transparency, and suspension, evoking the sensation of memory as something that hovers rather than accumulates. What remains visible is never fully anchored; it appears to drift at the edge of perception.
Figure 2. The Non-returnable One: A Study of Memory Based on Photographic, Qingran Liu
In the series The Non-returnable One: A Study of Memory Based on Photographic, Liu turns to her family photo albums. These images, once anchors of familiarity, gradually become unstable through repeated viewing. As time passes, inherited family narratives bleed into her own subjective recollections, blurring the boundary between personal memory and collective construction.
Liu translates these photographs into knitted and printed textile images, deliberately disrupting their structure so that recognisable forms slowly distort. Faces remain partially visible yet never fully accessible, as if memory itself were fraying at the edges. The act of translation becomes a process of erosion, in which clarity is steadily compromised.
Yarn functions here not simply as material, but as metaphor. Liu works with monofilament, rigid, transparent, and easily broken, a material defined by contradiction. It is simultaneously present and vanishing, resilient and vulnerable. This condition closely mirrors the nature of memory: it leaves traces that shape us, yet resists total grasp. What endures is not certainty, but tension.
Figure 3, Linkage 1, Qingran Liu
In Linkage 1, Liu begins with a photograph of a family gathered around a dining table. What once suggested warmth and intimacy is gradually unsettled. Faces stretch and drift apart, while the table, a symbol of cohesion, loses its structural clarity. The image no longer affirms harmony, but exposes an underlying fragility embedded within the scene.
As viewers move around the work, perception shifts continuously. Transparency causes the image to appear suspended in space, changing with each bodily movement. Viewing becomes an active process, shaped by distance, angle, and duration. This instability often resonates with viewers’ own experiences of family memory, familiar yet indistinct, intimate yet unreachable.
Rather than locating emotional impact in a single visual detail, Liu allows ambiguity itself to carry affective force. The inability to fully decipher the image becomes its most potent quality, activating memory through uncertainty rather than recognition.
Figure 4, Funerals under Formalism, We Pretend to Cry, Qingran Liu
In her 2023 project Funerals under Formalism, We Pretend to Cry, Liu expands her inquiry from personal memory to cultural structure. The work originates from her experience of attending a family funeral, a setting marked by elaborate ritual yet an absence of emotional release. This dissonance prompted her to examine how formalised mourning practices can regulate, rather than express, grief.
Figure 5, Funerals under Formalism, We Pretend to Cry, Qingran Liu
Returning to her hometown, Liu collected personal belongings and family photographs, scanning and collaging them into textile prints. Touch becomes crucial in this process. Handling garments once worn by relatives introduces a bodily form of remembrance that compensates for emotional distance. The resulting images resemble afterimages, faded, fragmented, and uneven, as though time itself had interfered with their clarity.
The installation combines flat textiles, fragmented mannequins, and enclosing structures, forming a provisional environment of remembrance. Rather than presenting a static memorial, the work functions as a spatial condition that viewers must physically enter. Movement through the space is constrained, producing a subtle sense of pressure and restraint.
Figure 6, Funerals under Formalism, We Pretend to Cry, Qingran Liu
This environment operates less as a representation of mourning than as a simulation of its mechanisms. Viewers are positioned within a ritualised setting, yet denied emotional release. Discomfort arises not from spectacle, but from quiet suppression. The work poses an unsettling question: when grief is formalised into obligation, what happens to genuine mourning?
Unlike practices that foreground communal memory or collective identity, Liu’s work remains inward-facing. Her installations do not seek catharsis or overt social critique. Instead, they construct introspective spaces where loss, restraint, and emotional inheritance can be felt rather than explained.
Across her practice, Liu treats textile as a vessel, one capable of carrying personal memory while exposing broader emotional structures. Fabric extends the body, absorbs touch, and records time through wear, tension, and distortion. In doing so, it becomes a quiet but persistent medium of reflection.
Figure 7, Funerals under Formalism, We Pretend to Cry, Qingran Liu
Qingran Liu’s work resists closure. It sustains open perceptual fields in which viewers become participants rather than observers. Through transparency, softness, and structural tension, her installations evoke spaces where memory is neither fully present nor entirely gone.
In this sense, “soft resistance” emerges not as opposition, but as endurance. Liu does not confront forgetting through force or declaration. Instead, she works through delicacy, allowing memory to surface slowly, through material hesitation and sensory attention. What remains is not a statement, but a lingering vibration: a quiet insistence that what is fragile, blurred, or unspoken still deserves to be held.
The much-awaited Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0.0 update has finally arrived, bringing a deluge of new content to the beloved virtual island. The new update also sees the addition of several classic Nintendo game systems like the NES, Famicom, Super NES, and Game Boy, all of which can be obtained in-game. Better yet, these consoles are fully interactive, with each one boasting a built-in retro game that you can play straight from the console itself. That said, unlocking and playing these classic Nintendo games in Animal Crossing: New Horizons requires a bit of in-game progress before they become available. So, to clear things up, here’s how to unlock and play classic Nintendo games in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons: How to Unlock and Play Classic Nintendo Games
To unlock and play classic Nintendo games in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you need to progress through the game until the Resort Hotel becomes available on your pier. From there, you’ll need to decorate the hotel and perform crafting requests for visiting islands to gain access to the retro Nintendo consoles and their playable games.
When you enter the hotel for the first time, you’ll be greeted by Tom Nook, who’ll introduce you to Leilani. She will then ask for your help furnishing the guest rooms. You can decorate up to two rooms per day, and there are no rules on how fancy the designs have to be. You’ll need to complete eight rooms before you can move on to the next stage, which usually takes four to five real-time days unless you choose to time-travel.
Once you’re done renovating the guest rooms, head back to the pier and speak to Cap’n on his boat. He will ask you to craft DIY items that can be delivered to other islands to promote your hotel. Each request you complete will reward you with Hotel Tickets (which you can redeem for items in the hotel’s shop) and gradually expand the items available in the hotel shop.
You’ll need to work through quite a few of these crafting requests, and when you reach the five- and 50-item milestones, Cap’n will thank you again with more Hotel Tickets. At that point, return inside and speak with Grams, who runs the hotel shop. She will mention that the shop’s selection has expanded and that some of the rarest items her son has found are now in stock.
This will unlock the Special tab in her shop, where classic Nintendo game consoles will become available. You can buy each console for 500 Hotel Tickets, and it’ll show up in your mailbox the next day. From there, all that’s left to do is fire up a console and have fun. Nintendo games in Animal Crossing: New Horizons are fully playable and each console will run a specific classic game. Just keep in mind that you’ll need an active Nintendo Switch Online membership to play them.
A$AP Rocky was the musical guest on last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, debuting songs from his new album Don’t Be Dumb. He opened with ‘Punk Rocky’ before delivering a medley of ‘Helicopter’ and the title track. Finn Wolfhard hosted the episode, and though his Stranger Things co-star Winona Ryder, who stars in the ‘Punk Rocky’ video, did not make an appearance, some of the other artists in the clip, including Thundercat, Danny Elfman, and Mark Harley, did show up. Watch it happen below.
During the episode, Sabrina Carpenter reprised her role as a 12-year-old boy on the Snackhomiez podcast, in a sketch that also featured Rocky. Next week, Geese will be making their musical guest debut on SNL.
Moving to a new country brings both opportunity and uncertainty. Many people arrive with dreams of building a better future, reuniting with loved ones, or starting a career in a place that offers new possibilities. For anyone seeking legal guidance, working with a trustedimmigration lawyer in Nashville can make the process far more manageable. Immigration laws are complex and constantly changing, so having professional support helps individuals and families avoid mistakes that could delay or even jeopardize their plans.
A knowledgeableimmigration attorney in Nashville also plays an important role in protecting a client’s rights while guiding them through each step of the legal process. From visa applications to permanent residency and citizenship, an experienced attorney helps people understand their options and choose the path that best fits their situation. This guidance can turn a stressful journey into a more confident and informed experience.
Understanding Immigration Law
Immigration law covers the rules and regulations that determine who may enter, live, work, and remain in the country. These laws govern everything from family based petitions and employment visas to asylum and naturalization. Because each case is different, there is no one size fits all solution. What works for one person may not apply to another.
An immigration lawyer studies the details of a client’s background and goals before recommending a legal strategy. This personalized approach helps ensure that applications are accurate, complete, and submitted on time.
Common Immigration Services
Immigration lawyers assist with a wide range of services. Many people seek help with family based immigration, which allows citizens and permanent residents to sponsor relatives. Employment based immigration is another common area, helping workers and employers secure the proper authorization to work legally.
Other services include student visas, investor visas, and humanitarian options such as asylum or protection for victims of crime. Each category has its own requirements and deadlines, making professional guidance especially valuable.
The Importance of Proper Documentation
One of the most challenging aspects of immigration is gathering and submitting the right documents. Applications often require proof of identity, financial stability, relationships, and employment. Missing or incorrect information can lead to delays or denials.
An immigration attorney helps clients prepare these materials carefully. By reviewing forms and supporting documents, they reduce the risk of errors and improve the chances of a successful outcome.
How an Immigration Lawyer Supports Clients
Beyond paperwork, immigration lawyers provide ongoing support and communication. They keep clients informed about the status of their case and explain what to expect next. This transparency helps reduce anxiety and builds trust.
Attorneys also act as advocates when issues arise. If a case faces challenges or requests for additional information, they respond quickly and professionally on behalf of the client.
Immigration and Family Unity
For many people, immigration is about bringing families together. Spouses, parents, and children often rely on legal petitions to reunite. These cases can be emotional and time sensitive, making it even more important to have experienced representation.
A lawyer understands how to present family relationships clearly and convincingly. This helps immigration authorities make informed decisions that support family unity whenever possible.
Employment Opportunities Through Immigration
Immigration law also opens doors for people with skills, education, or business ideas. Employment based visas allow companies to hire talented workers from around the world. Entrepreneurs and investors may also qualify for special programs.
An immigration attorney helps match a client’s qualifications with the right visa category. This ensures that opportunities are pursued legally and efficiently.
Adjusting Status and Permanent Residency
Many people start with a temporary visa and later apply for permanent residency. This process, often called adjustment of status, allows individuals to remain in the country while their green card application is reviewed.
An attorney guides clients through this transition, ensuring that all requirements are met. They also help prepare for interviews and respond to any concerns raised by immigration officials.
Path to Citizenship
Becoming a citizen is a major milestone. It offers security, voting rights, and the ability to sponsor additional family members. The naturalization process involves meeting residency requirements, passing tests, and demonstrating good moral character.
An immigration lawyer helps clients prepare for each step. This preparation increases confidence and improves the likelihood of approval.
Facing Challenges in Immigration Cases
Not all cases are straightforward. Some people face past visa issues, criminal records, or other complications. In these situations, legal expertise is especially important.
An attorney evaluates potential risks and develops strategies to address them. This may involve waivers, appeals, or alternative options that keep the case moving forward.
Looking Toward the Future
Immigration is about more than paperwork. It is about building a life, contributing to a community, and creating new opportunities. With the right legal guidance, people can focus on their goals rather than worrying about technical details.
A strong legal partnership provides peace of mind. Clients know that someone is working diligently to protect their interests and support their dreams.
Final Thoughts
The journey through immigration law can be complex, but it does not have to be overwhelming. With professional guidance, clear communication, and careful planning, individuals and families can navigate the process with confidence. An experienced immigration lawyer plays a crucial role in turning hope into reality and helping people take the next step toward a brighter future.
Families going through separation or divorce often face some of the most emotional and challenging moments of their lives. When children are involved, every decision feels even more important because it affects their safety, stability, and future. Working with a trustedchild custody attorney Greeneville gives parents the legal support and guidance they need to protect their rights while keeping their children’s best interests at the center of every discussion. A knowledgeable attorney helps bring clarity to a situation that can otherwise feel overwhelming.
Understanding the laws and procedures surroundingchild custody Greeneville is also essential for parents who want to make informed decisions. Custody arrangements are designed to support the physical, emotional, and developmental needs of children. With professional legal help, families can work toward agreements that encourage stability, healthy relationships, and long term well being for everyone involved.
What Child Custody Means
Child custody refers to the legal responsibility of caring for and making decisions for a child. This includes where the child lives, how they are educated, and how medical and personal choices are handled. Custody is generally divided into two main categories. Legal custody gives a parent the right to make important decisions, while physical custody determines where the child resides.
In many cases, parents share both legal and physical custody. This allows both parties to remain actively involved in their child’s life. When cooperation is possible, shared custody arrangements can support a balanced and supportive environment for children.
How Courts Determine Custody
Courts base custody decisions on what they believe is in the best interest of the child. This standard considers many factors, including the child’s age, emotional needs, and relationship with each parent. Judges also look at each parent’s ability to provide a safe and stable home.
Other considerations may include the child’s school environment, medical needs, and any history of conflict or instability. The goal is to create a living arrangement that promotes the child’s overall health and happiness.
The Role of a Child Custody Attorney
A child custody attorney plays a vital role in helping parents navigate the legal system. They explain the law, prepare legal documents, and represent their clients in court. More importantly, they provide support during a time when emotions can run high.
Attorneys also help parents understand their options. Whether through negotiation, mediation, or court proceedings, they work to achieve outcomes that align with the client’s goals while still focusing on what is best for the child.
Creating a Parenting Plan
A parenting plan is a written agreement that outlines how parents will share responsibilities. It covers topics such as visitation schedules, holidays, decision making, and communication. Having a clear plan reduces misunderstandings and provides consistency for children.
When both parents can agree on a plan, the process is usually smoother and less stressful. Attorneys often assist in drafting and reviewing these plans to ensure they are fair, practical, and legally sound.
Mediation and Alternative Solutions
Not all custody cases need to be decided in court. Mediation offers parents a chance to work together with the help of a neutral third party. This approach encourages cooperation and can lead to solutions that work well for both sides.
Mediation can be especially helpful when parents want to maintain a respectful relationship for the sake of their children. It often saves time, reduces costs, and leads to more flexible arrangements.
Modifying Custody Orders
Life changes, and sometimes custody arrangements need to change as well. A parent may relocate, change jobs, or experience shifts in their personal circumstances. When this happens, custody orders can be modified to better reflect the current situation.
An attorney can help parents request modifications and present the necessary information to the court. This ensures that the updated arrangement continues to serve the child’s best interests.
Protecting the Child’s Well Being
The emotional well being of children is at the heart of every custody case. Transitions can be difficult, and children may feel confused or anxious during legal proceedings. A thoughtful custody arrangement helps minimize disruption and provides a sense of security.
Parents are encouraged to communicate openly with their children and reassure them that they are loved and supported. Maintaining routines and encouraging healthy relationships with both parents can make a significant difference.
The Importance of Preparation
Preparation is key in any custody case. This includes gathering documents, keeping records, and understanding the legal process. Being organized helps parents present a clear and accurate picture of their situation.
An attorney guides clients through each step, ensuring that deadlines are met and that the case is presented effectively. This preparation strengthens the parent’s position and helps avoid unnecessary delays.
Looking Toward the Future
Custody decisions shape a child’s future. While the legal process may feel challenging, it is also an opportunity to build a framework that supports growth, stability, and healthy family relationships. Parents who approach the process with care and cooperation often achieve better outcomes.
With the right legal support, families can move forward with confidence. A clear custody arrangement provides a foundation that allows children to thrive and parents to focus on their role as caregivers.
Final Thoughts
Navigating child custody is never easy, but having professional guidance makes the journey more manageable. By understanding the law, focusing on the child’s needs, and working toward thoughtful agreements, families can create a positive path forward. A skilled child custody attorney helps turn difficult moments into opportunities for building a stronger and more supportive future.
Netflix has a new hit thriller series on its hands. His & Hers, which premiered in early January, is currently the most-watched show on the platform. With 19.9 million views this week, it’s also #1 in 51 countries where the service is available.
Not only that, but it dethroned the final season of Stranger Things! That’s no easy feat. Twisty and addictive, His & Hers clocks in at only six episodes. Should we expect a season 2?
His & Hers Season 2 Release Date
At the time of writing, Netflix hasn’t announced any plans about a potential His & Hers season 2. The production is also listed as a limited series and was adapted from a standalone novel. In other words, there’s a chance this might be all we get.
That said, the viewership numbers are great, and the show is enjoying quite the momentum. As long as its popularity holds steady, the platform could decide to order more episodes.
For now, all we can do is wait and see. If the title does get renewed, a follow-up could arrive in a couple of years.
His & Hers Cast
Tessa Thompson as Anna Andrews
Jon Bernthal as Detective Jack Harper
Pablo Schreiber as Richard Jones
Marin Ireland as Zoe Harper
Sunita Mani as Priya “Boston” Patel
Rebecca Rittenhouse as Lexy Jones
Crystal Fox as Alice Andrews
What Could Happen in His & Hers Season 2?
A psychological thriller, His & Hers explores how truth shifts depending on who’s telling the story. Based on the bestselling novel by Alice Feeney, the series follows Anna, a high-profile journalist whose life unravels when a woman is found murdered in her hometown.
Forced to return to the place she worked hard to escape, Anna is confronted with a past she isn’t fond of. She also has to deal with Jack, the detective investigating the crime and her estranged husband. As the investigation unfolds, their history complicates the search for the truth.
The show makes you question whose version of events can be trusted. It also touches upon the stories people tell themselves to survive. Add some unexpected twists into the mix, and it’s difficult to look away from this one.
By the time the finale wraps up, viewers find out who was behind the murders, so you don’t have to worry about cliffhangers. Still, while the story is self-contained, there’s room for a sequel. His & Hers season 2 could see Anna and Jack deal with a new case, or zoom in on the fallout from the big finale reveal.
Surviving inside the high-pressure world of investment banking is no joke. If you watch the HBO series Industry, you already know this. Volatile markets, personal crises, and a cutthroat environment rarely spell bliss. Add excellent performances into the mix, and you’ve got a financial thriller for the ages.
Now back with season 4 (available on BBC iPlayer in the UK), Industry keeps going strong after a complete reset. With episodes coming out weekly, we get a chance to find out how a post-Pierpoint world looks like. Does that mean that Industry season 5 will become a thing?
Industry Season 5 Release Date
At the time of writing, Industry hasn’t been renewed for additional episodes.
That said, the season 4 premiere just came out. An announcement might be on the horizon, especially given that the series has been critically acclaimed all throughout its run. As long as that’s the case, season 5 might arrive in early or mid-2026.
Industry Cast
Myha’la Herrold as Harper Stern
Marisa Abela as Yasmin Kara-Hanani
Sagar Radia as Rishi Ramdani
Kit Harington as Sir Henry Muck
Toheeb Jimoh as Kwabena Bannerman
Charlie Heaton as James Dycker
Max Minghella as Whitney Halberstram
Kiernan Shipka as Hayley Clay
Harry Lawtey as Robert Spearing
Ken Leung as Eric Tao
What Is Industry About?
Sharp and often brutal, Industry kicks off following young graduates who join the London office of prestigious investment bank Pierpoint & Co. That’s cue for ruthless workplace politics, financial power plays, class anxiety, and blurred personal boundaries.
At the centre of the action is Harper, a brilliant but self-destructive outsider whose hunger for power consistently puts her at odds with both the system and herself. Rather than glamorising finance, the show focuses on the emotional cost of chasing success in an environment where failure isn’t an option.
Season 3 ended on a dramatic shift, with Pierpoint effectively collapsing and the characters scattered. Season 4 is a whole new ballgame. Expect the tone to grow more cynical and expansive, focusing less on graduate anxiety and more on who truly controls capital.
The show’s creators confirmed that this installment is a departure from the previous three, comparing it to a conspiracy thriller. Based on early reviews, it works, so we can’t wait to see what kind of nightmares they have in store for Harper and company.
As for Industry season 5, it’s too early to speculate. It all depends on what happens during this one. Episodes arrive weekly until March 2026. We’d tune in.
Are There Other Shows Like Industry?
If you like Industry, you might also enjoy Succession, Billions, Mad Men, or Suits.
It’s remarkable that it took over a decade for Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore to make an album together. Two of the biggest figures in contemporary ambient music, the composers developed a friendship long before they shared a home base, moving to Los Angeles around the same time. They’d performed live together and collaborated on singles, but it wasn’t until they were invited to record an album in Paris, using the vast and historic collection of instruments at the Musée de la Musique, that a joint full-length finally materialized. Barwick and Lattimore have shown admiration for each other’s spiritual world-building, but, in the same way that they use technology and looping to elevate their respective instruments, their kinship heightens and bends the reality they mutually absorbed towards the cosmic—from the strange survivor’s guilt of leaving California in the midst of last year’s tragic wildfires to the reverie of a once-in-a-lifetime creative opportunity—towards the cosmic. “You may never go home again/ At least not the home you know,” Barwick sings, unfiltered, the way a friend who can see it in your eyes might hear it.
In the first installment of our In Conversation series, Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore talk about the origins of their friendship, their time in Paris, making Tragic Magic, and more.
Do you remember the first time you were inspired by each other’s music?
Mary Lattimore: I definitely listened to The Magic Place a lot. I wrote Juliana a fan mail through her website, and I was like, “I really love your music so much.” Listening to it felt like, “Wow, this is kind of what I am trying to do with the harp, but on another, more celestial level. This is so dreamy and so masterful.”
Julianna Barwick: Mary!
ML: Yeah, masterful looping.
JB: We met in person when I played in Philadelphia in early 2014 on tour and hung out. The first time I saw you play was at that little place in Bushwick. I think it was with Jeff [Zeigler].
ML: Was it called Body Actualized?
JB: It was Trans-Pecos. I was living in the neighborhood at the time and walked over there – it was a morning show or something.
ML: It was daytime.
JB: At that point, I was like, “This is my friend.” We hadn’t hung out very much at all. But I was feeling a kinship through another solo musician making “weird music” with lots of loops. In Mary’s case, obviously with the harp, which was so impressive on so many levels. She knows how to play this instrument in its traditional form, but through our own creativity and inspiration and expression, has figured out how to do it in a way that nobody else is doing. I feel like that’s what draws me into bands or musicians. It’s that inimitable quality that they have, their singularness, that really is exciting. And Mary obviously has that in spades.
ML: Thank you. Was my jaw wired shut during that performance?
JB: See, I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about it. [both laugh]
ML: I forgot about that. Yeah, I’d tripped and fallen and broken my jaw, and it was wired shut during that performance.
JB: I just remember I felt so bad because of that. But we’d only hung out in person one other time, I think, and I was like, “This is the funnest, most delightful person I’ve ever met.” And also felt that kinship – we’re tall ladies from the South making weirdo bedroom recordings with a loop pedal. I think that might have been early 2016, and not long after that, we played together at Trans-Pecos. We practiced together in the neighborhood…
ML: And the jaw was unwired by then.
JB: This was me playing on your record – these were your shows.
ML: Yeah, that was Hundreds of Days.
JB: Yeah, because then I went to Philly with you, and we played at – what’s it called?
ML: PhilaMOCA, yeah.
JB: That was ten years ago! That was super fun. I had a record [Will] come out in May 2016, and Mary opened several shows in September – 11 shows in 11 days. Did we do any playing on each other’s sets in those shows? I don’t think we did.
ML: A little jam at the end or something, maybe?
JB: I don’t think we did that until Australia [during a 2019 tour].
ML: And then we both moved to LA really shortly after that. Started playing together, DJing together.
JB: Guesting on each other’s records, doing remixes.
ML: Hanging out. Going to parties. Barbecues.
JB: Enjoying our LA crew. I guess it was probably a year and a half ago or so that Mary was asked about this opportunity for a Paris record.
ML: We started making demos a little bit over a year ago in one afternoon, and then went to record.
You’ve described Tragic Magic as “musical telepathy,” and I’m curious about the ways that was a new or a unique feeling for you, given your collaborative history.
ML: We were going to this very specific place, and we knew that we would never be able to play these instruments again. We knew we would never be asked to make a record in the basement of the Museum of Musical Instruments in Paris. We knew what a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity this was for these nine days. And I feel like that kind of heightened the musical telepathy a little bit, in that we both knew that we had this mission, and we knew each other’s styles, what we needed to do, what we needed to channel. There was more of a time constraint – constraints in general that enhanced the energy of those days. Kind of electrified everything.
JB: Our ability to make something together quickly really came in handy with this opportunity, because we actually had nine full days in the studio together. The first day was setting up and getting acquainted with these instruments, being brave enough to touch them and plug them in. Our history together and our similar approaches really came in handy for the time constraints that we had. We did jam for a couple days before we went over to Paris, so we had a few ideas, but everything else we made in the moment. We really wanted to be inspired by the novelty of the opportunity, the preciousness of the instruments, being in Paris, which is one of our very favorite cities. It was all something different – Mary and I usually make music by ourselves; we’ve done our fair share of collaborations, Mary a little bit more than me, but we’re pretty much used to just rolling on our own.
ML: We spent the weekend in between the two weeks of recording just exploring Paris, going to museums, absorbing the art, the culture, the music. We saw some concerts, we went to exhibitions, we had really good food, drank some wine, took long walks. That part was crucial to this music, too, just absorbing the vibe of the beautiful city.
JB: Yeah, that weekend was absolutely awe-inspiring. We stumbled upon a Mica Levi concert with some collaborators in an absolutely sick venue. We went to the Louvre one day, we went to see a James Turrell exhibit. It was just the craziest, most inspiring, beautiful weekend.
ML: They were also the only sunny days in the whole trip. The rest of the days were rainy and cold and wintry, and all of Paris was out and about in the parks.
JB: After that trip, people would ask me, “How was Paris?” And I was like, “It was perfect.” It was the perfect experience across the board, all the way from InFiné, our hosts – Mary and I really appreciated being treated so respectfully and lovingly by this label. They really took care of us, and we met up with them several times. Even just walking up to the Philharmonie every day, this sparkling silver structure, where we could go into it and record in the Museum of Instruments – it was dazzling. Our engineer, Trevor Spencer, had the greatest ideas and was so respectful. In my eyes, it could not have been more magical. We even loved our hotel! [laughs] We were obsessed with the breakfast there.
What kind of stuff would you talk about on those long walks?
JB: I mean, we covered everything under the sun with Trevor.
ML: Love life.
JB: Yeah, professional, music experiences and backgrounds, love lives, places we live in. It was cool because Mary and I are huge James Turrell fans. And Trevor had never experienced his art, which – it’s an experience. It’s not just an observation. You really experience his work, and it affects you, I want to say, spiritually. I feel very moved by his work, so it was really cool to watch someone else experience it for the first time. The very first night we were together was January 26, Sunday night, and Mary had said, “It’s so crazy that our hotel is so close to Sacre Coeur.” I said I’ve never been there, and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, it’s so gorgeous.”
ML: Our choice was to either stay at the hotel and be cozy and have dinner there or something, or go out into the cold, and I’m glad you guys were like, “Let’s do it now. Let’s go.”
JB: We were just gonna go look at it, and then go have dinner and go back to the hotel. But we went there, and it was open for business. They were having Sunday night Mass. We were able to walk through, and it was such a moving experience. Lots of times you go somewhere to make a record, and you have your experience, and you make your record, and you’re drawing from within more than anything. But in this case, there were just so many outside magical forces. That night, we walked through the church, and about three-quarters of the way around, the organs started playing these magnificent drones, and then this nun got up on the pulpit and started singing and waving her arms. It was absolutely gorgeous and had us all in tears. It felt very sacred. I almost felt like, “Is this for… This kind of feels like this is for us.” [laughs] Not really, but it just felt so…
ML: Meant to be, that we would walk in at that moment. Also, we were coming from LA, which had just experienced these crazy wildfires in the city, and two weeks later, we were in Paris making this record. We were very grateful to have a few days of being away from that pain of everyone where we lived, appreciating the break really acutely, and our antennae were up for a lot of magic. We were being very receptive to little signs and a sprinkling of beauty and destiny and light: What are we supposed to do? Why were we brought here? What are we gonna make here? This is a moment in time that we’re never gonna get back, and then we’re gonna go back to our city that is so heavy right now, so devastated. But we had this little twinkly moment to process this melancholy, this huge life event. It felt like a secret world.
JB: Cosmic winks, as you say. Universal pulls back through time. We experienced such a moving sonic experience at Sacre Coeur on night one, and then the next day was our first day in the museum, setting everything up to record, mic checking, Mary putting her fingers on these harps for the first time. In sound check mode, what we ended up making on the spot turned into ‘Perpetual Adoration’. I think we were still carrying that holy experience from the night before into the next day.
ML: And I wouldn’t say we’re religious-y people. We’re not going to church and stuff, but that musical sacredness transcended any kind of organized religion. Being able to hear that nun’s beautiful voice felt really human and part of the world – really terrestrial, but also really celestial at the same time, you know?
JB: It just felt like the timelessness of music making, which is as old as humanity. They’re kind of one and the same. Even tapping into what the city had to offer in that way, to have this record be an actual record of our time – not just in the Museum o Instruments, with these instruments, but also in the city.
You’re referring to it as your Paris record, but there’s also this mournful side of it, this spectre of grief over LA. Over time, have you talked about how you hear this record now as opposed to how it felt when you were making it?
JB: I feel nostalgic for both emotional experiences when I listen back to it. I feel nostalgic for the feeling after the fires in LA, and I feel nostalgic for the magic that we experienced in Paris. But I definitely feel like we were carrying a lot of sorrow. I would never say it was a sorrowful record, but we were definitely processing all of that and ended up writing a song specifically about it, which of course is ‘Melted Moon’. I wrote lyrics for that, and were we were all crying together.
ML: Yeah, it was a heavy day making that song, for sure. I remember you showed me this photo that someone had sent you from the fire in the Palisades, maybe, and you were like, “What does this look like, Mary?” And I said, “Volcano.”And you’re like, “Exactly. It looks just like a volcano.” And that was part of the lyrics you wrote.
JB: That was a picture of the Palos Verdes, and you could see…
ML: We saw nature that was unnatural those days – the color of the sky was olive green, sickening. It’s something I did not know in my childhood, the black hole sun – the way the sun comes through smoke., That song – we saw things that we can’t unsee. There is a loss of innocence every time something like this happens.
JB: At once, it felt incredible to get out of the country, to get away from all of it, but there was also a hanging – not that I knew what to do or how to help, but a feeling of, “I left my city, and all that stuff’s happening there.” A little bit like abandoning your home.
ML: Survivor’s guilt, yeah.
JB: So we came to Paris with so much heaviness, and I think that’s what made the beauty and the magic of the experience heightened even more. It was definitely cathartic. Even performing the songs live is cathartic, because you can’t not think about what you’re singing about or what you’re playing.
Is there anything you’ve been meaning to ask each other?
ML: Julianna made some cookies yesterday, and I would love to know how I find the recipe. [Julianna laughs] I’ve been eating them this morning, and I can’t stop! As you said, these cookies are addictive. Walnuts, oats, raisins, butter, butter, butter!
JB: Pecans, girl.
Ml: Oh, they’re pecans. Pecans.
JB: It’s a very Southern thing to say pecan. Very Louisiana thing. I don’t know where that latitude on the word is. It’s Pioneer Woman, girl. I just Googled “Pioneer Woman oatmeal raisin cookie.” She is a cooking show personality here in the States, and her show has really soothed me over the last few years. Her cookies are fabulous.
ML: Well, yours are too.
JB: That’s why I gave you, like, a dozen of them, because I was like, “I will literally eat all of these.” Are you preparing any food items today, Mary?
ML: I’m going grocery shopping.
JB: Oh, what are you gonna do?
ML: I’m buying Italian beer, I’m having a visitor come from Italy.
JB: Moretti?
ML: He loves Moretti beer.
JB: Did I guess that?!
ML: I thought I had told you that! No, you just guessed it? That’s so funny.
JB: Yeah, because when I worked at Mary’s Trattori – making that connection now…
ML: It’s all connected.
JB: We had beers, Moretti Beers. Full circle, baby! Get some spumoni too.
ML: There’s a very cute store in my neighborhood, Buccatini, and it has a lot of Italian groceries. This is my visitor’s first time in the United States, so I feel like I want to show him that it’s not all horrific. I’m gonna show him the beautiful sides of LA.
JB: And it is a beautiful city.
ML: It’s a wonderful day today. The sky is clear and blue. It’s rained a lot, so the hills are emerald colored, and it’s very lush and green. It feels like a good time to be here.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Mary Lattimore and Julianna Barwick’s Tragic Magic is out now.
“[I]t has always seemed to me that graft, bribery, etc., at the public level, is one of the worst crimes that there is. These people hide behind the façade of some great company or corporation and consequently no one knows how dreadful they really are, what awful things they do.”
Akira Kurosawa1
“Corruption cases are not directly connected to people’s everyday lives, so they occur repeatedly and we’ve grown indifferent to them. But in this film, we want to present an individual who hasn’t grown indifferent and whose anger drives him unceasingly to punish the guilty.”
Eijiro Hisaita, co-screenwriter2
When the American Occupation of Japan began in 1945, the foreign authorities now governing the Land of the Rising Sun institutionalized a myriad of new laws with the aim of ridding the country of the nationalism and militarism blamed for its aggression during the Pacific War. This included imposing a new constitution, outlawing “problematic” media, and implementing changes to the legal system. As academic David T. Johnson writes in a 2000 issue of Asian Perspective, “Occupation officials, like many Japanese, believed that prewar prosecutors had abused their power by trampling human rights and pursuing their own political objectives. As a result, Occupation reforms aimed above all at decreasing the procuracy’s control over the police and judiciary and at increasing the procuracy’s responsiveness to democratic forces.” And so, in 1947, the Japanese codified, with the Americans’ blessing, Article 14 of the Public Prosecutors Office Law, granting the Minister of Justice authority over the Prosecutor General in “the investigation and disposition” of criminal cases.3
Less than a year after the Occupation ended in April 1952, Japan’s government passed the Law for the Subsidization of Interest and Insurance Against Losses of Oceangoing Shipbuilding. Enacted toward the end of the Korean War, this legislation was designed to benefit transportation and shipbuilding companies by allowing contractors to borrow money at below-interest rates. The law wasn’t even two years old when investigators uncovered a memo written by the president of Yamashita Steamship Company containing the names of thirty-plus bureaucrats and politicians, along with the dates he met them and his illicit goals with each rendezvous. Further detective work revealed the subsidization law had, in fact, been the result of a mass bribery that distributed more than ¥100 million between the recipients. Prosecutors arrested seventy-one businessmen and officeholders, among them Japan’s transportation minister, the deputy prime minister, and Liberal Party Secretary General Eisaku Sato.4
The scandal was destined for greater infamy when the majority of those implicated evaded justice. Of the seventy-one men seized, thirty-two were indicted, twenty-three received convictions, and only one went to prison.5 Some never even faced police interrogation. Hayato Ikeda, president of the Liberal Party’s Policy Aims Research Council and the man who in 1952 went on record proclaiming “It makes no difference to me if five or ten small businessmen are forced to commit suicide” so long as big corporations continued thriving,6 got off when his ¥2 million bribe was reclassified as a legal gift. And the police weren’t even allowed to question Sato—on account of his mentor, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, implementing Article 14 to prevent his arrest.7
The Shipbuilding Scandal of 1954 was the first major scandal of Japan’s post-Occupation era. And yet, as much as it exemplified the corrupt dynamic that existed between Japan’s government and the private sector—not to mention how an Occupation-era law had been weaponized to null accountability—in many ways, it represented nothing new. In 1948, when the country was still under American rule, Prime Minister Hitoshi Ashida’s cabinet resigned—after just seven months in power—following the discovery that the finance minister had taken nearly ¥3 million “in return for special favors to the Showa Denko fertilizer company.”8 (Ashida himself likewise confessed before Japan’s House of Representatives to accepting a ¥1 million “donation.”)9 The year’s controversies ballooned further still with the Coal Mine Scandal, the proceedings of which included the indictment of a government official10 but ended with half of the defendants walking and one dying in the trial process.11
Two deaths occurred during the Shipbuilding Scandal:12 one man was found hanging in the storeroom near his residence, and another either jumped or fell from a Tokyo roof.13 Suicide became a recurring consequence in subsequent postwar wrongdoing. Between the years 1958 and 1960, for instance, Japan experienced an uptick in suicides, and while the majority stemmed from financial woes, those involving chicanery drew the most attention.14 Pondering recent events was Akira Kurosawa, the director of such internationally acclaimed classics as Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), and—most recently—The Hidden Fortress (1958). “There was so much corruption going on [at the executive level of Japanese industry] at the time. The investigations were always dropped when some assistant manager would kill himself. That made no sense.” Unchecked power wasn’t a new subject to Kurosawa. Earlier films of his addressed topics like government persecution and companies bribing individuals, and 1952’s Ikiru even addressed the link between bureaucracy and organized crime. But he now found himself begging the question: “What would happen if somebody investigated the corruption and followed it through to the end?”15
Kurosawa was concurrently at a crucial juncture, career-wise. He’d entered the film industry in 1936 by joining Photo Chemical Laboratory,16 a production outlet that two years later participated in the merger that became the company Toho.17 And while he ceased being a permanent employee in the late ‘40s,18 the majority of his work continued to be financed at his former stomping grounds. As time went on, Toho grew flustered with the money Kurosawa’s perfectionism frequently cost them (and was likewise hearing complaints from filmmakers unhappy not to be receiving comparable budgets). All of this led to the front office persuading Kurosawa to form his own company, Kurosawa Production, to help shoulder expenses.19 Such a move surely came with pressure, spoken or not, to shoot pictures of obvious commercial value. But Kurosawa insisted that films “made only to make money did not appeal to me—one should not take advantage of an audience. Instead, I wanted to make a movie of some social significance.”20
As it turned out, he wasn’t alone in contemplating recent scandals. Around the time of his company’s formation, he read a promising script authored by his nephew, Yasuo “Mike” Inoue. A graduate of Waseda University’s Department of Political Economics, Inoue was knowledgeable about bureaucratic chicanery; however, his scenario was returned with a suggestion: “Why don’t you write a script about avenging these corrupt men?” The revised screenplay, titled Bad Men’s Prosperity, was submitted six months later, after which Kurosawa conducted a rewrite with a team of regular collaborators. He first brought on board Eijiro Hisaita, co-scenarist on his most outwardly political postwar film, 1946’s No Regrets for Our Youth, and together they penned approximately forty pages before being joined by Ryuzo Kikushima and down the road by Hideo Oguni.21 Another writer, Shinobu Hashimoto, joined later still, though he only committed to the two weeks asked of him.22 Toho agreed to provide distribution and assist with financing. However, the studio imposed a restriction: the scandal in the movie was not to be modeled on a real-life case. “If we had based it on a true story,” stated Kurosawa, “[Toho] wouldn’t have allowed us to make it.”23
This wasn’t the first time Kurosawa’s creativity had been stifled by the front office. The earlier-mentioned No Regrets for Our Youth told the story of a sheltered young woman in wartime Japan whose father loses professorship for liberalism. Given the script’s loose basis on actual academic persecution in the 1930s, Kurosawa wanted to open No Regrets with prologue text calling out Ichiro Hatoyama, Japan’s Education Minister of 1931-1934. But as Kurosawa discussed in a 1985 interview with writer Kyoko Hirano, Hatoyama’s name was struck because “the Toho company told me […] it would have been upsetting.” No Regrets excoriated a since-dismantled government—an action the Occupation authorities encouraged—but there was conflict in that Hatoyama, at the time, was the head of the powerful Liberal Party.24 Consequently, the prologue text was rewritten to pin blame, more generically, on “militarists.” Flashing forward to the late ‘50s, things seemingly hadn’t changed. Perhaps due to known ties between government and contemporaneous scandals, Kurosawa and his team were forced to devise a scenario that was plausible yet entirely fictitious for their anti-corruption movie, retitled The Bad Sleep Well.
Kurosawa presents the results in what is justly one of the most celebrated sequences in his filmography. The movie opens with a high-class yet seemingly ordinary wedding; guests emerge from the elevator and approach the registry table—suddenly, a mob of wisecracking, camera-armed reporters barge in, announcing they’re here to witness an arrest. From the foyer, they document a Public Corporation for Land Development employee being taken into custody before marching to the sidelines of the ballroom. There, they oversee and comment on the ceremony, much in the manner of a Greek chorus. Their observations disclose that guests at the wedding include senior members of not only Public Corp. but also Dairyu Construction—and that, five years earlier, the two were implicated in a kickback scandal culminating with the suicide of an assistant chief. Kurosawa introduces his vengeance theme with the wheeling out of a wedding cake—one meticulously carved to resemble the office building from which the aforementioned assistant jumped. The cake passes members of Public Corp. and is finally parked behind the company’s vice president, Iwabuchi, who is also the father of the bride.
As the plot unfolds, Public Corp. underlings are manipulated into committing suicide—thus putting a stop to pending investigations. Meanwhile, the wedding cake turns out to be the first in a series of taunts aimed at those responsible for the kickback scandal. The movie is still relatively young when Kurosawa informs us the cake and subsequent taunts were arranged by Iwabuchi’s new son-in-law Nishi (Toshiro Mifune). The plot advances further before revealing he is, in fact, the illegitimate son of the dead assistant chief and that he’s seeking to expose Public Corp. and avenge his father. As has been argued before, The Bad Sleep Well bears a passing resemblance to Shakespeare, with Nishi frequently being interpreted as a Hamlet stand-in and Iwabuchi representing Claudius. To my knowledge, Kurosawa never admitted to being influenced, at least consciously, by the Bard on this production, though it’s worth noting he considered Hamlet one of his two favorite Shakespeare plays—the other being Macbeth, which he unambiguously adapted in 1957 as Throne of Blood.25 Regardless, a Hamlet-esque story allowed him to denounce corruption through the vindictive person angle that interested him.
The Bad Sleep Well is an angry film populated by variously culpable men. In its 150 minutes, colleagues instruct colleagues to sacrifice themselves, co-conspirators turn against one another (there’s a chilling moment wherein executives plot an assassination), and even our (anti-)hero is hardly a figure of innocence. Nishi admits to having resented his father in life (for abandoning him to take a career-advancing marriage), only to commit a quasi-repeat of his progenitor’s sin: he weds Iwabuchi’s daughter Yoshiko to enter Public Corporation and gain access to the man he seeks retribution on. And in the process, he inflicts pain on one of the few good people in the story. Yoshiko, touchingly played by Kyoko Kagawa, is presented as a kind-hearted person bearing wounds (both physical and emotional) caused by others. She walks with a limp—the result of a biking accident caused by her overprotective brother (Tatsuya Mihashi) when they were kids—and her new husband hurts her with his reluctance to give her affection. In one of the most heartbreaking scenes ever filmed by Kurosawa, Nishi rushes to his wife’s aid after a fall. He scoops her up, and their faces wind up in a taut close-up as they nearly kiss—until Nishi withdraws. He then deposits her in her bedroom (they sleep separately) before closing the sliding shoji door. Kurosawa’s camera lingers on the shoji as Yoshiko’s sobs permeate the soundtrack.
In what further complicates Nishi’s quest, he not only comes to reciprocate his bride’s feelings—culminating in a powerful love scene that was axed for the movie’s U.S. release26—but also recognizes the genuine connection she shares with her father. Yoshiko enunciates disbelief that her parent, who has always doted on and cared for her, could be involved in anything so unscrupulous as murder. And in a touching Act Two sequence—wherein she cooks dinner with her father—we see why. Iwabuchi is played by Masayuki Mori (utterly unrecognizable under thick make-up—one wouldn’t know at glance this is the samurai from Rashomon), who lends humanity to the character in these scenes and creates a villain who isn’t all Black Hat. But he also delivers cold-blooded, manipulative nastiness when the script reminds us that, at the end of the day, Iwabuchi holds nothing—not even his daughter—above corporate evil. As is demonstrated in one of the most bone-chilling endings in cinema history.
Late in Act Three, Iwabuchi learns of Nishi’s hideout, drugs Yoshiko to prevent her from warning him, and dispatches a troupe of thugs to seal the protagonist’s fate. The climax occurs off-screen and is recounted by an associate of Nishi’s in front of a traumatized Yoshiko and her brother. Actor Takeshi Kato evokes remarkable intensity as the associate, screaming how his friend was drugged with alcohol and left in the path of a freight train. With that, Nishi’s mission to bring down evil came to an undignified and frankly humiliating end: his legacy will be that of a drunk who got himself killed. Iwabuchi feigns sadness to the press (the Greek chorus of reporters this time remains solemn and respectful—no wisecracks) before the vice president retreats to privacy and reveals again where his loyalty lies. His children, having discovered their father’s actions, leave him. He makes a move to follow, only to spin around mid-stride to answer a phone call from an unseen superior who has periodically contacted him. Iwabuchi hurls apologies and suggests he resign for the corporation’s sake—only to be instructed to go abroad for a short period and then come back, whereafter business will resume as normal. The vice president, who has talked often of a future government career, returns the phone to its cradle, at which point the film’s title—The Bad Sleep Well—reappears, its very literal nature reinforced by everything we’ve seen.
That the man on the opposite end of the line remains unseen and unnamed is due, once again, to restrictions. Kurosawa described his ending as “not explicit enough [that] an even worse man is [calling Iwabuchi], but in Japan if you go any further then you are bound to run into serious trouble. This came as a big surprise to me, and maybe the picture would have been better if I had been braver. […] Maybe I could have in a country like America. Japan, however, cannot be this free and this makes me sad.”27 That said, The Bad Sleep Well’s finale is a case where limitations worked to the film’s advantage: the ending is ten times more chilling because of the unanswered question as to who controls Iwabuchi. (Is it the president of Public Corporation, someone associated with another company, a government official? It’s more scary—and scarily accurate—to let the audience ask questions.) Furthermore, ambiguity in this case pushes the viewer to draw comparisons to the role corruption plays in their world. Which is precisely what Japanese filmgoers did when The Bad Sleep Well premiered in 1960.
Kurosawa once suggested that he would’ve shown “someone very high in the Japanese government,”28 and the director remarked in an interview with Cinéaste magazine that “everyone in the audience must have deduced that it must be the then Premier [Nobusuke] Kishi who is the ultimate source of corruption and who is talking at the other end of the telephone.”29 Historian David Conrad notes in his book Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan that The Bad Sleep Well premiered not long after Kishi renewed the controversial Security Treaty with the United States.30 Ratification of the treaty permitted American military bases to remain on Japanese soil and triggered riots by people who felt Japan, despite being rid of the Occupation, was still a U.S. military outpost. Kishi responded to protests at the National Diet Building by dispatching the police, and a young woman was trampled to death amid the resultant chaos. The tragedy provoked his resignation, only for him to be replaced by Hayato Ikeda; Japan was now governed by one of the participants in the Shipbuilding Scandal.
The Bad Sleep Well wasn’t among the hits of Akira Kurosawa’s career. Despite ranking third on Kinema Junpo’s list of the year’s best films, it was—financially speaking—a picture that just came and went. Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV writes that it “earned its money back and then some, but in the end turned a smaller profit than the Kurosawa films that immediately followed.”31 What’s more, Toho—for decades—denied it the opportunity for re-release32 and hesitated to provide export to the Occident (deeming the picture too “Japanese” and the setting too modern for audiences that associated the country with period dramas).33 Eventually it appeared at the 1961 Berlin International Film Festival but failed to take home any awards and received tepid to negative reviews. W.L. Webb of The Guardian saluted fine individual qualities—namely Mori’s “magisterial performance”—but dismissed Kurosawa’s latest as one that “will hardly find a place in the history of the cinema beside its creator’s Rashomon or The Seven Samurai.”34
The mixed reception continued following distribution to American arthouses in 1962-63. Per Motion Picture Exhibitor, Kurosawa had delivered a “lengthy, talky entry” with merely “average” direction35 while Boxoffice magazine declared it “too grim and tragic for many patrons.”36The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann, ordinarily a champion of Kurosawa, was especially harsh: “It is so remote in every way from the mainstream of his work that, except for the opening sequence and the presence of some of his ‘stock company,’ there is no internal reason to believe that Kurosawa did it. It could have been made by any experienced, tamely imaginative director of films or television.”37 One of the more glowing reviews came from Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times, who complained that “Far too many critics are writing off the new Akira Kurosawa film […] as second-rate in comparison to his celebrated period dramas. […] This is a grave injustice, for Kurosawa perceives that the world of high finance and corporate intrigue is material for classic tragedy acted in the grand style with a hero who has imagination and courage far beyond the usual Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. […] Through style and technique Kurosawa transforms his lurid expose of corrupt government and high-level bribery into timeless and universal social criticism.”38
Kurosawa speculated years later that The Bad Sleep Well was a victim of being made too early.39 While there is room to question this—that contemporaneous viewers associated the finale with Nobusuke Kishi indicates an audience actively contemplating recent events—perhaps co-scenarist Eijiro Hisaita was right in saying Japan had grown indifferent to chicanery as a broad topic. To Kurosawa’s point, time would bring headline-grabbing incidents of greater scope, such as the Lockheed bribery scandal of 1976, the consequences of which included the arrest of a former prime minister40 and actor Mitsuyashu Maeno carrying out a suicide attack in an attempt to kill businessman Yoshio Kodama.41 The following decade witnessed the insider trading Recruit scandal that involved Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party. As for The Bad Sleep Well’s reception across the Pacific: a friend of mine once suggested (I think accurately) its impact might’ve been greater in the 1970s, in the wake of Watergate and amid other corporate thrillers like Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974).
Regardless, the initial lukewarm reception is unfortunate, for The Bad Sleep Well is one of Kurosawa’s great films and perhaps his most internationally relevant. The movie premiered in 1960, and if the ensuing decades—marred by the above mentioned incidents as well as Iran-Contra, Gürtel, Hanbo, Epstein, etc.—have taught us anything, it’s that corruption exists worldwide, guilty parties don’t always get comeuppance, and victims aren’t guaranteed justice. Japan was no exception. In spite of Prosecutor General Shigeki Itoh’s popular maxim “We will not let the wicked sleep,” fighting corruption in the Land of the Rising Sun has been historically cumbersome thanks to Article 14 and restrictions placed on sting operations, wiretaps, and plea bargains. Investigative journalist Takashi Tachibana might’ve been responding to Itoh when he cried out, “The wicked are sleeping. Prosecutors, wake up!”42
And for Akira Kurosawa, the Japanese film studios, throughout his lifetime, remained too timid to properly confront their nation’s sins. The roadblocks he faced with No Regrets for Our Youth in the 1940s and again with The Bad Sleep Well in the ‘50s-60s remained prevalent and even left him unwilling to pursue certain projects. In a 1991 interview with Mark Schilling of The Japan Times, the director remarked that, for all his fame and prestige, he still didn’t enjoy true carte blanche. A movie about Emperor Hirohito, for instance, would likely lead to an assassination by “rightists who oppose any film about the emperor.” Kurosawa likewise commented, “It would [be] hard to make a film about modern-day Japan. There would be a lot of resistance to such a movie. If I wanted to make a film about the Recruit scandal—which would be an excellent topic, by the way—I probably couldn’t get any companies here to finance it. We are supposed to have freedom of speech in Japan, but in fact there are a lot of restrictions.”43
References
1. Richie, Donald. The Films of Akira Kurosawa (Third Edition, Expanded and Updated). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996, p. 140
2. Akira Kurosawa: It is Wonderful to Create. Directed by Yoshinari Okamoto. Kurosawa Production Co., 2002
3. Johnson, David T. “Why the Wicked Sleep: The Prosecution of Political Corruption in Postwar Japan.” Asian Perspective, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2000, p. 63
4. Ibid, pp. 64-5
5. Ibid, p. 65
6. Conrad, David. Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2022, pp. 137-9
7. Johnson, pp. 64-5
8. Beech, Keyes. “Graft and Corruption the Rule in Jap Politics, Scandals Reveal.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 30 December 1948, p. 11
9. “Tojo’s Successor Admits Cumshaw from Contractors.” The Independent, 29 November 1948, p. 3
10. “Member of Jap Diet Is Indicited.” The Flint Journal, 22 December 1948, p. 1
11. Johnson, p. 61
12. Ibid, p. 65
13. “Leader in Japan Scandal Suicides.” The Index-Journal, 13 April 1954, p. 1
14. Conrad, p. 142
15. Galbraith, Stuart, IV. The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. New York: Faber & Faber, 2002, p. 285
16. Ibid, p. 25
17. “History.” Toho. Accessed 11 January 2026
18. Kurosawa Akira. Something Like an Autobiography. New York: Vintage Books, 1983, p. 168
19. Yoshimoto Mitsuhiro. Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000, p. 274
20. Richie, p. 140
21. Galbraith, pp. 284
22. Hashimoto Shinobu. Translated by Lori Hitchcock Morimoto. Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I. New York: Vertical, Inc., 2015, p. 169
23. Galbraith, pp. 284
24. Hirano Kyoko. Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation, 1945-1952. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992, pp. 187-9
25. Richie, p. 141
26. Galbraith p. 294
27. Ibid, p. 288
28. Ibid
29. Hirano Kyoko. “Making Films for All the People: An Interview with Akira Kurosawa.” Cinéaste, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1986), p. 24
30. Conrad, p. 139
31. Galbraith, p. 294
32. Hirano, “Making Films for All the People: An Interview with Akira Kurosawa,” p. 24
33. Galbraith, p. 294
34. Webb, W.L. “Berlin Film Festival.” The Guardian, 3 July 1961, p. 7
35. Motion Picture Exhibitor (December 1962 – March 1963), p. 5018
36. Boxoffice (Jan-March 1963), p. 10
37. Kauffmann, Stanley. A World on Film: Criticism and Comment. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1966, p. 382
38. Thomas, Kevin. “High Finance Theme of New Film Tragedy.” The Los Angeles Times, 16 February 1963, p. 14
39. It is Wonderful to Create
40. Blaker, Michael. “Japan 1976: The Year of Lockheed.” Asian Survey, Vol. 17, No. 1, A Survey of Asia: Part I (January 1977), p. 83
41. “Star Dies in Kamikaze Dive on Bribes Man.” Northern Echo, 24 March 1976, p. 1
42. Johnson, p. 59
43. Schilling, Mark. Contemporary Japanese Film. Boston: Weatherhill, 1999, p. 58
