Troubled Waters

‘A pleasure to read’ Mieko Kawakami

‘Subtle, precise and deft’ Lucy Caldwell

‘Remarkable and devastating’ Senaa Ahmad

Ichiyo Higuchi, Japan’s first professional female author, wrote about daily life with unprecedented intimacy and honesty. This new translation of her finest stories showcases the profound sensitivity, lyrical eye and classical elegance of a revered Japanese writer.

Vividly evoking the colourful festivals and salty street banter of Tokyo’s turn-of-the-century red-light district, delicately eliciting its inhabitants’ quiet yearning and regret, Higuchi introduces us to children losing their innocence, working-class women losing their livelihoods, and teahouse courtesans losing their hearts. In her clear-eyed vision of the world, longing and memory are what save us.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Bryan Karetnyk.

Ichiyo Higuchi (1872-1896) was born into a prosperous family whose fortunes declined sharply over the course of her childhood. After the deaths of her father and brother, she moved with her mother and sisters to a poor Tokyo neighbourhood adjacent to the Yoshiwara pleasure district. In an effort to shore up the family finances, Higuchi began publishing her short stories, which quickly earned her a reputation as a major new writer. Over a brief period she wrote some twenty-one stories, thousands of poems and an extensive diary. She died of tuberculosis shortly after the beginning of this brilliant literary career, aged only twenty-four. From 2004 to 2024 her face appeared on Japan’s 5,000-yen note.

Bryan Karetnyk is a British writer and translator. His translations for Pushkin Press include works by Gaito Gazdanov, Irina Odoevtseva, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki and Ryunosuke Akutagawa. He is also the editor of the Penguin Classics anthology Russian Emigre Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky.