A THOUSAND PAILS OF WATER

Japanese Yukio, who is bothered by the fact that his father hunts whales for a living, finds a beached whale one day and promises to save it by throwing a thousand pails of water over it. And so he stumbles along exhausted, pouring water on the whale until his father and other villagers come to help him out, and the rising tide at last allows the animal to swim out to sea. Offered no doubt as a reconciliation between reverence for life and killing to live, this could just as well be taken as a sentimental evasion.