When I Whistle: Analysis of Major Characters
"When I Whistle: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the intricate dynamics between key figures in a narrative set against the backdrop of postwar Japan. Central to the story is Ozu, an aging businessman who grapples with nostalgia for a more disciplined past and a deep concern for the moral direction of contemporary society, particularly reflected in his son, Eiichi. Ozu's character is marked by a yearning for human compassion amidst the harsh realities of modern industrial life. In contrast, Eiichi represents the ambitious, often cold new generation, focused solely on career advancement within the medical field, embodying the technological and spiritual disconnect prevalent in contemporary Japan.
The character of Flatfish, Ozu's childhood friend, serves as a foil to both Ozu and Eiichi. His carefree, irresponsible nature highlights the loss of a more vibrant, unburdened masculinity that has faded in the wake of war. Aiko, the woman both Ozu cherished and Eiichi treats as just another patient, symbolizes the loss of tenderness and human connection in a rapidly advancing society. Lastly, Dr. Ii exemplifies the unscrupulous elements within the medical profession, further illustrating the moral decay that Ozu perceives in the world around him. This rich tapestry of characters invites readers to reflect on the broader themes of nostalgia, ambition, and the evolving nature of human relationships in a changing cultural landscape.
When I Whistle: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Shsaku End
First published: Kuchibue o fuku toki, 1974 (English translation, 1979)
Genre: Novel
Locale: Japan
Plot: Social realism
Time: The 1960's
Ozu, an aging Japanese businessman entering his senior years. Ozu is a humble clerk, preoccupied with memories of his youth and greatly troubled by his increasing fear of the different moral vision animating the youth of postwar Japan, as exemplified in the unadorned avarice and ambition of his son, Eiichi. Nostalgic for an older, more disciplined, and even militaristic Japan, he finds in the present a predatory industrial power immune to simple human compassion and idealism. His mental search recalls Nada Middle School and his impish friend Flatfish, who whiled away his youth with Ozu, longing for female companionship. Both had sought the affection of the nubile, beautiful Aiko. Ozu's flashbacks and reveries of his youth and postadolescent contacts with Flat-fish come crashing to a halt when he learns of Flatfish's death from a battlefield disease. He determines to search for Aiko to report this bad news. Finding her accidentally, as one of his son's terminal cancer patients, Ozu sees Aiko as merely one laboratory rat, prey to medical science's preoccupation with advanced objective knowledge at the expense of nurturing care and concern for individual persons. While locating Aiko's childhood home, now bulldozed in the name of progress, Ozu sinks into despair as his generation fades into the bleak sunset of Japan's moral resignation in the midst of its economic and technological triumphs.
Flatfish, Ozu's childhood friend and constant companion in the idyllic days before World War II. Flatfish is an undisciplined, unintellectual parody of Japanese manhood, always in trouble at the Nada Middle School, where he and Ozu met, and unconcerned about career advancement in his chosen employment. Irrepressible, frivolous, and hopelessly attracted to the young girls in his class and older ones, Flatfish surrenders any claim to scholastic prowess or responsible citizenship, choosing to remain an adolescent as long as he can. He tempers Ozu's basic reserved nature and teaches him to revel in the spontaneous and childish. Living only in Ozu's flashbacks, Flatfish is a vivid contrast to Ozu's son, Eiichi, in his free, unpretentious pursuit of joy and immediate fulfillment. Flatfish is the buoyant, unfettered spirit of Japanese manhood that has died in the aftermath of the wars. Ozu's discovery of his death triggers the novel's denouement as Ozu seeks out the lovely Aiko to share his grief, only to discover more.
Eiichi, Ozu's son. Ambitious and without scruples, Eiichi is desperate to rise within the medical profession as a surgeon. He is completely identified with a grim, work-oriented Japan: He is driven, technological, spiritually barren, and the epitome of Western imperialism that his father fought to defeat. He finds his father's basic humanism debilitating and unprogressive, a needless sentimentality that impedes efficiency and his ultimate career goals. His reputation for callousness and insensitivity are well established when father and son are united by the illness of Ozu's beloved Aiko. Here their differing ethics are underscored and foregrounded. As his patient, Aiko represents to Eiichi (an aptly drawn representative of the new generation of Japanese professionals) only a convenient subject for an experimental cancer treatment, not a person deserving care, love, or basic dignity.
Aiko, a patient of Eiichi and the object of Ozu's adolescent infatuation. Aiko is a war widow and the living symbol to Ozu of all that is pure and authentic in the Japanese culture of his youth. She lives in the novel more as a memory or an icon than as a living, breathing human being, trapped as she is in Eiichi's experimental cancer program. Her death signals to Ozu the final victory of technological imperialism over the tenderness and compassion representative of the Japanese character to him in his adolescence in prewar Japan.
Dr. Ii, a malevolent, unscrupulous doctor in the hospital where Eiichi works. Dr. Ii is an imperious, natural product of postwar Japan's rigid determination to rise from the ashes of ignominy and defeat. He is experienced in using people and is perfectly willing to prescribe worthless drugs for his patients if the pharmaceutical company that produces them continues to fund his research. As the dubious role model for Eiichi and other medical personnel, Dr. Ii manifests the greed and indifference to civility that Ozu finds manifested everywhere in the new Japan.