In the Shade of Spring Leaves
W. W. Norton & Company · 388 pages
A biography of a young writer of the Meiji years, paired with translations of nine of her stories.
The life and the stories light each other, so the fiction reads with her hardship and ambition close behind it.
For a night at a desk by lamplight.
About this book
Higuchi Ichiyō wrote in poverty in 1890s Tokyo, supporting her mother and sister with sewing, a small shop, and the stories she sold. This book follows her life through her diaries and letters, then gives nine of her stories, including "Child's Play," about children growing up beside the pleasure quarter. Her women and children speak from narrow lives with sharp feeling. What stays is a clear, proud voice that found its full range within only a few years.