小さな葦の葉の生活
Higuchi Ichiyo, the leading Japanese writer of the Meiji Era
Higuchi Ichiyo pseudonym of Higuchi Natsu, also called Higuchi Natsuko, poet and novelist was the most important Japanese writer and the first Japanese professional novelist since the beginning of the Meiji Era. Her work depicted Tokyo's licensed leisure districts.
In her short life of twenty-four years,
and in particular for one year and two months before her death, she left works
that were highly relevant in the history of modern Japanese Literature. There
were twenty-two books, eight published in that period of fourteen months.
Writing about Japanese Literature
is not an easy task given the scarcity of Japanese books published in Brazil.
Much of my work is based on the dissertation Considerations on the work Nigorie
(Cove of Turbid Waters) and its female author Higuchi Ichiyo (1872 - 1896) by
female Professor Rika Hagino,
presented to the Graduate Program in Japanese Language, Literature and Culture
at the Department of Oriental Letters of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and
Human Sciences of the University of São Paulo.
The book Ôtsugomori (1894) opened the doors to the writer's realistic phase. In this work, the characters that before her were described based on emotional elements were portrayed through the direct description of the life of the woman who suffers from poverty, a reflection of the author's own experience. Ichiyo moves away from the imaginary world of the previous works and uses real elements.
Ôtsugomori is a story
with a well-structured beginning and end, without the classic air of faded
ideas. Her texts become simpler, concise and with defined ideas. As she sought
the reality of life, she drew on her own experiences.
From samurai pride to extreme poverty
Born in the Meiji Era
with strong remnants of feudalism, at a time when the socioeconomic position of
a woman still did not have the freedom of today, the writer was subject to the
concepts of social virtue of the time, without rebelling against its reality
and without crying out for female freedom.
From a family in
decline in the face of the new political and social regime of the Meiji Era,
she had her situation worsened due to the debts left by her father. However,
she did not lose the characteristic pride of women at that time of belonging to
the samurai class. She entered high society due to her poetic practice, a
traditional custom in female education.
However, none of that stopped her from living in extreme poverty. She experienced the reality of the lower class of society by sharing the feelings of underprivileged women. Ichiyo was the first writer of the time to express so directly the sadness of women abandoned by unfair society. Her emotion-filled romanticism in depicting oppressed characters, especially the complex female psychology, made her the leading writer of the Meiji Era, due to the purity she imparted to her works.
The beginning of the realistic phase
When she moved to Hongo
Maruyiama Fukuyamacho, a clandestine red-light district in Tokyo, she had the
opportunity to have direct contact with the prostitutes, either by writing the
signs of brothels or writing letters at the request of these illiterate women.
She used Saikaku Ihara's Gazoku-setchu style (a mixture of elegant and common language) to describe the behavior of women and the resulting sadness during the Meiji period. While she shows compassion for them, she makes a real and forceful description, using the use of dialogue to skillfully describe the environments and character of her characters.
In August 1886, at the
age of 14, Ichiyo entered the waka (classical poems) course at the Haginoya
School and stayed there for six years. Her experience in the course had a great
influence on her personal life and especially on her literary life. She studied
waka and the classics with Utako Nakajima and novels with Nakara Tôsui.
At that time, Haginoya
was a school attended by the wives and daughters of the wealthy classes of the
old regime, such as court nobles, senior adviser to the Tokugawa shogunate,
former domain lords, Meiji-era public officials, and military personnel.
Virtually all of his works are written in a style between the refined of the
Heian aristocracy and the neoclassical characteristic of the mid-Edo Era
(794-1185).
Natarai Tosui boosts Ichiyo's career
In 1891, she was
introduced to a minor novelist, Nakarai Tosui, who became an important
inspiration for the literary diary she kept from 1891 to 1896, published as Wakabakage (In the Shadow of Spring
Leaves).
Natarai Tôsui taught Ichiyo
the first techniques of romance. At the time, his writing was tied to his
former training, both in content and technique. Ichiyo ignored Tosui's main
suggestion, namely that she use colloquial language in her writing, and went on
to polish her own distinctive classical prose style. However, his influence on Ichiyo's
works is quite noticeable.
She wrote sensitively
primarily about the women of old downtown Tokyo, at a time when traditional
society was giving way to industrialization.
The Ichiyo´s works include Otsugomori (The Last Day of the Year – 1894) and his masterpiece, Takekurabe (Growing up – 1895), a delicate story of children growing up on the fringes of the pleasure district. Natarai Tosui created the periodical Musashino, with the intention of making Ichiyo known. She first signed under her pseudonym Higuchi Ichiyo on the publication of Yamazakura. That name grew out of her realization that she was wandering alone through the storms of life, like a reed leaf flowing in a great river. Ichiyo literally means a plant leaf.
She later published the
works Tamadasuki (Adorno to fasten
the kimono sleeve), Samidare (The
rain at the beginning of summer) and Wakarejimo
(The frost of the eighty-first night from the beginning of spring). Through
Tôsui, she made her first publication in fifteen successive parts in the Kaishin Shinbun newspaper.
Her master and only love
Tosui would be his
first and only love. However, a scandal about her relationship with him spread
(Although they were both single, the customs of the time did not approve of
such associations between a man and a woman not intending to marry). Because of
this, she broke off relations with Tosui.
After the relationship
ended, she published Umoregi (Buried
Wood), an idealistic novel in the style of Rohan
Koda, completely different from her previous works. Tosui's departure was
an event of deep sadness and this can be seen in Her Diary: I cannot even shed
tears, I am so sad.
In 1896, when
Takekurabe was published in full in Bungei Kurabu, it won wide acclaim from Ogai Mori, Rohan Koda, and others; Ogai
Mori highly praised Ichiyo in Mezamashigusa,
and many members of the Bungakukai began to visit her.
In May of the same
year, she published Warekara (From myself),
and Tsuzoku Shokanbun (Popular epistle)
in Nichiyo Hyakka Zensho (The Daily
Encyclopedia). Ichiyo had advanced tuberculosis, and when she was diagnosed in
August, she was considered hopeless.
Virtually all of
Higuchi Ichiyo's works are translated into English. Unfortunately, only one in
Portuguese: Wakaremichi (The
farewell), edited by University of São Paulo (USP). See: Tales from the Meiji
Era, Geny Wakisaka, organized by the Center for Japanese Studies at USP.
Premature death
In her short existence,
Ichiyo went from being the daughter of a samurai family to extreme poverty,
living with the upper strata of society and with the socially excluded strata.
She appreciated Literature as an art and that later became her livelihood. After
her death, her sister Kuni played a key role in the young writer's existence to
the present day. Contrary to her sister's request that her Diaries must be burned shortly after her death, Kuni preserved all
of Ichiyo's works and personal effects.
She died of pulmonary
tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. She started the Diaries at age fifteen, in January 1887, and finished it in July
1896. The book has forty items. It is possible to walk with him the path that Ichiyo
walked for approximately six years, a period from the passage of unknown writer
to becoming famous.
Ichiyo's life as a
novelist lasted just over fourteen months. In 1897, the year after his death, Ichiyo Zenshu (The Complete Collection
of Ichiyo's Works) and Kotei Ichiyo
Zenshu (The Complete Revised Collection of Ichiyo's Works) were published.
The life of a small reed leaf
Higuchi Ichiyo was born on March 25, 1872 (May 2 by the current calendar), five years after the beginning of the Meiji Era (1868-1912) and the military government's move from Edo to Tokyo. He was born in the official residence of Tokyo prefectural officials.
Her father Higuchi
Noriyoshi (1830-1889) and mother Taki (1834-1898) came from a decadent samurai
family. Although she was an interested student, she had to drop out of school
at the age of eleven, as determined by her mother, who believed that her
daughter should start preparing for marriage in the future. At the age of fourteen,
she entered the waka (Traditional poem) course in Haginoya, having contact with
classical Literature, her literary base.
Her father died when
she was eighteen, a victim of pulmonary tuberculosis. As it was not possible to
depend on her two older brothers, she worked as a breadwinner, running a tiny
sale of household items and sweets. Meanwhile, she initially published poems in
a traditional Japanese style and later, novels.
Despite the differences
in nationality and culture, I see some identification between Higuchi Ichiyo
and Carolina Maria de Jesus. Both lived in extreme poverty, left school early
and had to fight hard for survival. However, none of this has shaken the vital
need to write as an inner compensation for the life they have led.
Both wrote their diaries that have reached the present time as artistic and literary documents and, above all, as testimonies of two women who overcame adversity with the only weapon the ability to put feelings and emotions on paper and to carry out their purposes, even in the midst of adversity.
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