Higuchi Ichiyō: Life and Major Works

Born in Tokyo in 1872; her real name was Higuchi Natsu (also given as Natsuko). She studied waka poetry and the classics at Nakajima Utako's poetry school, the Haginoya. After her father's death she supported her mother and younger sister as head of the household, and turned to fiction for a living under the guidance of Nakarai Tōsui. Her experience running a small sundries and candy shop near the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters, in Shitaya Ryūsenji-chō, would bear fruit in "Growing Up" ("Takekurabe"). In little more than fourteen months from the end of 1894, she published one masterpiece after another — "Ōtsugomori" ("The Last Day of the Year"), "Takekurabe," "Nigorie" ("Troubled Waters"), "Jūsan'ya" ("The Thirteenth Night") — a burst of creativity known as her "miraculous fourteen months." She died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1896 at the age of 24. She was Japan's first professional woman writer in the modern era, and her portrait later appeared on the five-thousand-yen banknote.