Ichiyo Higuchi

Ichiyō Higuchi was Japan's first professional female writer of modern literature, specialising in short stories and poetry, and was also an extensive diarist. Her portrait appears on the 5000 yen banknote. She was born in Tokyo on 2 May 1872 as the fourth child and second daughter of Noriyoshi Higuchi, a samurai, and Ayame "Taki" Furuya. Her parents were from a peasant community in nearby Yamanashi Prefecture, but her father had managed to procure samurai status in 1867. Despite only enjoying the position for a short time before the samurai caste was abolished with the Meiji Restoration, growing up in a samurai household was a formative experience for her. In 1886, she began studying waka poetry at the Haginoya, a private school run by Utako Nakajima. There, she received weekly poetry lessons and lectures on Japanese literature. There were also monthly poetry competitions in which all students, previous and current, were invited to participate. Poetry taught at this school was that of the conservative court poets of the Heian period. She felt inferior and unprepossessing among the other students, the great majority of whom came from the upper-class. Her compulsion to write became evident by 1891 when she began to keep a diary in earnest. It would become hundreds of pages long, covering five years left of her life. With her feelings of social inferiority, her timidity, and the increasing poverty of her family, her diary was the place where she could assert herself. Her diaries were also a place for her to assert objectivity and included her views on literary art as well as others' views on her work. In 1889, two years after her oldest brother's death, her father died. Following a failed business investment by her father, finances were very tight. Her fiancé Saburō Shibuya soon broke off their engagement. At the proposal of her teacher, she moved into the Haginoya as an apprentice, but left after a few months due to being unhappy with what she saw as an inordinate amount of household duties. Together with her mother and younger sister Kuniko, she moved to Hongō district, where the women earned their income by sewing and laundry work. Seeing the success of a classmate, Kaho Miyake, who had written a novel, Yabu no uguisu (lit. "The Bush Warbler in the Grove"), she decided to become a writer herself. She adopted the pen name Ichiyō, a term used in classical Japanese poetry, meaning "a single leaf". She submitted her first story, Wakare-michi (lit. "Separate Ways"), to the literary magazine Miyako no Hana in 1892, but it was rejected. She then sent another story, Ōtsugomori (lit. "The New Year's Eve"), to the rival magazine Bungakkai, which accepted it and published it in 1894. This marked the beginning of her literary career, which was unfortunately cut short by her early death. She wrote a total of 21 short stories and over 250 poems, most of which were published in Bungakkai. Her stories were influenced by the works of Kyōka Izumi, whom she admired, and depicted the lives of the common people, especially the women, in the rapidly changing society of the Meiji era. She often set her stories in the Yoshiwara district, the licensed pleasure quarter of Tokyo, where she observed the harsh realities of the prostitutes, the geisha, and the low-class workers. Some of her most famous stories are Takekurabe (lit. "Child's Play" or "Growing Up"), Nigorie (lit. "Troubled Waters" or "Muddy Stream"), and Jūsanya (lit. "The Thirteenth Night"). She also wrote about her own experiences and emotions in her poems, which were highly praised for their lyrical and elegant style. She died of tuberculosis on 23 November 1896, at the age of 24. She was buried at Yanaka Cemetery in Tokyo. Her grave is marked by a stone monument inscribed with one of her poems. Her works have been translated into several languages and have inspired many adaptations, such as films, dramas, and manga. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of modern Japanese literature and a pioneer of women's literature in Japan.