Troubled Waters

Essential Stories

A new translation of 5 remarkable stories from Japan’s first professional woman writer, chronicling the lives of the turn-of-the-century working class

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.