This new translation of the best stories by Ichiyo Higuchi showcases the pioneering author's profound sensitivity and lyrical eye. The crystalline beauty of falling snow is a painful reminder of lost innocence; three children growing up on the fringes of Tokyo's red-light district enjoy a last summer of freedom before adulthood and its compromises overtake them; a discontented serving maid and a prodigal son find their transgressions can be mutually beneficial; and a man's passion for an indifferent teahouse courtesan becomes so consuming that he is willing to sacrifice everything to it - his job, his family, perhaps even his life. Rarely translated into English, but revered in Japan for the purity of her classical language and her status as the country's first professional woman writer, Ichiyo Higuchi drew on her own short life in a poor Tokyo neighbourhood to inspire her work. With immense delicacy of phrase and feeling, and vivid evocations of the colourful festivals and salty street banter that mask unspoken yearning and disappointed hopes, she transmits both the beauty and the struggle of working-class women's lives in turn-of-the-century Japan. In her clear-eyed vision of the world, longing and memory may be the only solace.



Ichiyo Higuchi (1872-1896) was born into a prosperous family whose fortunes declined sharply over the course of her childhood. After the deaths of her father and brother, she and her mother and sisters moved to a house in a poor Tokyo neighbourhood adjacent to the Yoshiwara pleasure district, and survived by running a small shop and taking in laundry. In an effort to shore up the family finances, Higuchi began publishing her short stories, which quickly earned her a reputation as a major new writer. Over a brief period she wrote some two dozen stories, thousands of poems and an extensive diary, drawing inspiration from her life among Tokyo's working classes, her family's misfortunes, and her disappointed love for an older writer. She died of tuberculosis shortly after the beginning of this brilliant literary career, aged only twenty-four.