Troubled Waters (Paperback or Softback)

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 collection of short stories, several never before translated, brings the work of Ichiyo Higuchi to an English readership for the first time. In her brief life, cut short by tuberculosis at the age of 24, she became the first woman in Japan to make a living as a writer. A major figure of turn-of-the-century Meiji-era literature, she left behind her a collection of short stories, poems and diaries that turned creative attention to the lives of Tokyo’s poor and broke a path for women and realist fiction writers alike.

In the title story, ‘Troubled Waters’, courtesan Oriki dismisses a lover who can no longer afford to pay for her favors – but when his obsession continues the consequences for both, and for his wife and child, will turn tragic. ‘Growing Pains’, one of the single most famous short stories in Japanese literature, depicts the coming of age of a group of children in Tokyo’s red-light district. Lively Midori, serious Nobu and hardworking Shota find childhood and its freedoms coming to a close over the course of a season, bookended by summer and winter festivals whose events prove decisive for each of their lives.

These and 3 other stories are rendered in a fresh translation by Bryan Karetnyk, giving English readers access to Higuchi’s sensitive moral awareness, earthy street humor, and elegiac rendering of life’s inevitable compromises.

Ichiyo Higuchi (1872-1896) came from a middle-class Tokyo family which slipped into poverty over the course of her childhood. After the deaths of her father and brother, she and her mother and sisters were forced to take in laundry and sewing to survive, and she began publishing her fiction and poetry in an attempt to shore up the family finances. She earned quick recognition for her combination of classical style with attentive observation of working-class street life, but her career was short-lived – she died of tuberculosis at the age of 24, only four years after her first publication. Still much read in Japan, her portrait graces the 5,000-yen note. 

Bryan Karetnyk is a British writer rand translator from the Russian and Japanese. His work for Pushkin Press includes books by Gaito Gazdanov, Irina Odoevtseva, Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Jun’Ichiro Tanizaki.