Universal Dependencies - English - GUM

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Ichiyō Higuchi

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Ichiyō Higuchi (樋口 一葉 Higuchi Ichiyō, May 2, 1872 – November 23, 1896) was a pen name of Japanese author Natsu Higuchi (樋口 奈津 Higuchi Natsu), also known as Natsuko Higuchi (樋口 夏子 Higuchi Natsuko).

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Specializing in short stories, she was one of the first important writers to appear in the Meiji period (1868 - 1912) and Japan's first prominent woman writer of modern times.

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She wrote relatively little as a result of living a brief life — she died at 24 — but her stories had a large impact on Japanese literature and she is still appreciated by the Japanese public today.

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Efforts to become a writer

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She, her mother, and younger sister made ends meet by doing needlework, washing, and other jobs.

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In 1892, after seeing the success of a classmate, Kaho Tanabe, who wrote a novel, Higuchi decided to become a novelist to support her family.

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Nevertheless, her initial efforts at writing fiction were in the form of a short story, a form to which she would remain true.

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In 1891 she met her future advisor who would help, she assumed, this poet-turned-fiction-writer and connect her with editors: Tosui Nakarai.

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She fell in love with him right away, not knowing that, at 31, he had a reputation as a womanizer.

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Nor did she realize that he wrote popular literature which aimed to please the general public and in no way wished to be associated with serious literature.

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Her mentor did not return her passionate, if discreet, love for him, and instead treated her as a younger sister.

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This failed relationship would become a recurrent theme in Higuchi's fiction.

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Eventually, she got the break she was so eager for:

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her first stories were published in a minor newspaper under her pen name, Ichiyo Higuchi.

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The stories from this first period (1892 – 94) suffered from the excessive influence of Heian poetry.

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Higuchi felt compelled to demonstrate her classical literary training.

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The plots were thin, there was little development of character and they were loaded down by excessive sentiment, especially when compared to what she was writing concurrently in her diary.

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But she was developing rapidly.

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Several of her trademark themes appear; for example, the triangular relationship among a lonely, beautiful, young woman who has lost her parents, a handsome man who has abandoned her (and remains in the background), and a lonely and desperate ragamuffin who falls in love with her.

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Another theme Higuchi repeated was the ambition and cruelty of the Meiji middle class.

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The story 'Umoregi' ('In Obscurity') signaled Higuchi's arrival as a professional writer.

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It was published in the prestigious journal Miyako no Hana in 1892, only nine months after she had started writing in earnest.

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Her work was noticed and she was recognized as a promising new author.

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Her last years

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In 1893, Higuchi, her mother and her sister abandoned their middle class house and, with a grim determination to survive, moved to a poor neighborhood where they opened a stationery store that before long failed.

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Their new dwelling was a five-minute walk from Tokyo's ill-famed red-light district, the Yoshiwara.

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Her experience living in this neighborhood would provide material for several of her later stories, especially 'Takekurabe', (literally,' Comparing heights'; 'Child's Play' in the Robert Lyons Danly translation; also called 'Growing Up' in the Edward Seidensticker translation.)

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The stories of her mature period (1894 – 96) were not only marked by her experience living near the red-light district and greater concern over the plight of women, but also by the influence of Ihara Saikaku, a 17th-century writer, whose stories she had recently discovered.

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His distinctiveness lay in great part in his acceptance of low-life characters as worthwhile literary subjects.

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What Higuchi added was a special awareness of suffering and sensitivity.

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To this period belong 'Ōtsugomori' ('On the Last Day of the Year'), 'Nigorie' ('Troubled Waters'), 'Wakare-Michi' ('Separate Ways'), 'Jūsan'ya' ('The Thirteenth Night') and 'Takekurabe' ('Child's Play').

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The last two are considered her best work.

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With these last stories her fame spread throughout the Tokyo literary establishment.

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In her humble home she was visited by other writers, students of poetry, admirers, the curious, critics, and editors requesting her collaboration.

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But between constant interruptions and frequent headaches, Higuchi stopped writing.

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As her father and one of her brothers had before her, she had caught tuberculosis.

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She died on November 23, 1896, at the age of twenty-four.

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Higuchi's likeness adorns the Japanese 5000 yen banknote as of fall 2004, becoming the third woman to appear on a Japanese banknote, after Empress Jingū in 1881 and Murasaki Shikibu in 2000.

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Her best-known stories have been made into movies.