Troubled Waters

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.