This is something of an outlier in Naruse's filmography as it addresses a specific instance of social injustice and is set far from his customary urban milieu. But it is consistent with his general approach, observing characters who try to navigate the treacherous waters of human relations and usually come to grief but carry on as best they can.
Whistling in Kotan takes place in a town on Hokkaido among a family of Ainu, the indigenous people of the island who have historically suffered from discrimination by the Japanese. The focus is on an Ainu brother and sister whose widowed father has taken to the bottle, and who have to deal with persecution by their schoolmates. The various plot strands fan out from there, and none of them are really resolved. Most obviously left hanging is the fate of a neighbor girl whose adopted grandmother makes a failed ploy to marry her off to a Japanese which results in the mortified girl running away, never to be heard from again. As always with Naruse nothing is simple: the schoolmaster father of the intended bridegroom is revered for his tolerance of the Ainu, but when confronted with the prospect of his son's marriage to one he is non-committal. He doesn't refuse outright but tells the grandmother that his son will have to make his own choice, and asks if she has talked to her daughter about her plan. He gently, and quite reasonably, advises her to go home and reconsider. The Ainu see this as a betrayal by someone they considered an ally, but the schoolmaster continues to visit the Ainu families and remains sympathetic to them. We are left to consider for ourselves whether the grandmother overplayed her hand and in fact was rash in promoting an engagement based on her assumptions about the feelings of the parties involved. Unusually for a Naruse character, she simply gives up and dies once her granddaughter disappears instead of soldiering on in the face of adversity.
The kids on the other hand, after their father is killed in a work accident and their naive plans of working to pay for their school tuition are dashed, do manage to carry on in the end. The final blow is the arrival of their uncle who announces he will sell their house and take them to live in the city where they will work in a shop. This is certainly not what they would have wanted, but the uncle says they will still be able to go to school (a mixed blessing as we've seen) so all is not lost.
There is a wealth of wisdom to be mined from all of Naruse's movies, and this is no exception. I have yet to encounter one that is less than first-rate and endlessly thought-provoking.
Whistling in Kotan takes place in a town on Hokkaido among a family of Ainu, the indigenous people of the island who have historically suffered from discrimination by the Japanese. The focus is on an Ainu brother and sister whose widowed father has taken to the bottle, and who have to deal with persecution by their schoolmates. The various plot strands fan out from there, and none of them are really resolved. Most obviously left hanging is the fate of a neighbor girl whose adopted grandmother makes a failed ploy to marry her off to a Japanese which results in the mortified girl running away, never to be heard from again. As always with Naruse nothing is simple: the schoolmaster father of the intended bridegroom is revered for his tolerance of the Ainu, but when confronted with the prospect of his son's marriage to one he is non-committal. He doesn't refuse outright but tells the grandmother that his son will have to make his own choice, and asks if she has talked to her daughter about her plan. He gently, and quite reasonably, advises her to go home and reconsider. The Ainu see this as a betrayal by someone they considered an ally, but the schoolmaster continues to visit the Ainu families and remains sympathetic to them. We are left to consider for ourselves whether the grandmother overplayed her hand and in fact was rash in promoting an engagement based on her assumptions about the feelings of the parties involved. Unusually for a Naruse character, she simply gives up and dies once her granddaughter disappears instead of soldiering on in the face of adversity.
The kids on the other hand, after their father is killed in a work accident and their naive plans of working to pay for their school tuition are dashed, do manage to carry on in the end. The final blow is the arrival of their uncle who announces he will sell their house and take them to live in the city where they will work in a shop. This is certainly not what they would have wanted, but the uncle says they will still be able to go to school (a mixed blessing as we've seen) so all is not lost.
There is a wealth of wisdom to be mined from all of Naruse's movies, and this is no exception. I have yet to encounter one that is less than first-rate and endlessly thought-provoking.
