[1] Hibari after her controversial prepubescent years, was therefore "publicly criticized for her blatant eroticism", and that is when she was offered the leading role in 1949 drama The Sorrowful Whistle by Miyoji Ieki.

In the film, Hibari plays a young war orphan, Tanaka Mitsuko, searching for her older brother Kenzō (Hara Yasumi), a repatriated soldier.

These changes underscore the transformation of Hibari, the actress, from freakish stage act to mainstream film star and from child celebrity to national symbol of proper Japanese girlhood.

In the end, a new family is formed: Kenzō has coincidentally met and fallen in love with Fujikawa's daughter, and the young couple become surrogate parents for Mitsuko.

The image of innocent girlhood at the end of the film overshadows but does not completely erase the suggestion of Hibari's controversial stage persona, which still appears at some moments in Sorrowful Whistle.