SOURCE: "Higuchi Ichiyō: A Literature of Her Own," in Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 1985, pp. 53-66.

[In the following excerpt, Mitsutani examines Higuchi's place as a woman writer in Meiji period (1868-1912) literature and examines the evolution of her literary style.]

At the close of his small book on one of the masterpieces of Heian literature, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, Arthur Waley mentions Higuchi Ichiyō, drawing an analogy between her position in the literature of the Meiji era, and that of women writers such as Sei Shonagon and Murasaki Shikibu in the literature of Heian, approximately a thousand years before Ichiyō lived:

While the energy of male writers was largely absorbed in acquiring a foreign culture, and their output was still too completely derivative to be of much significance, there arose a woman [Higuchi Ichiyō (1872-1896)] whose work, hitching straight on to the popular novelettes of the eighteenth century, has outlived the pseudo-European experimentations of her contemporaries.

In other words, at a time when convention required men to do most of their prose writing in Chinese, women such as Sei Shonagon and Murasaki Shikibu were producing, in the kana phonetic script, works that were later to be regarded as classics; by the same token Ichiyō, who was also a woman, was able to surpass her male contemporaries and create works now considered classics of Meiji literature by staying within the indigenous Japanese tradition. I am more concerned with Ichiyō's relation to her own time, and with what she wanted to say as a writer, both to her contemporaries and to us today, than with exploring her relationship to the past. Waley's analogy does, however, provide a starting point for a consideration of how the position of women writers changed during the thousand years that lie between the Heian and Meiji periods, and of Ichiyō's position in the Meiji literary scene.

The very fact that during the Heian period Chinese characters (kan-ji) were referred to as "men's letters" (otokomoji), while the kana phonetic script was called "woman's hand" (onna-de), clearly indicates the extent to which the prose writing of the men and women of Heian was confined to separate spheres. While I have no intention of attempting to analyze the background of Heian court life that produced this situation, I would like to suggest that literary seclusion from the world of men provided Heian women writers with a certain freedom to develop a literature of their own, in their own space and time. Heian women writers had no need either to compete with or to imitate the writing of men, and in this sense, their writing in itself denies the charge made by John Stuart Mill in his essay "The Subjection of Women" (1869). Mill asserted that "If women lived in a different country from men, and had never read any of their writings, they would have a literature of their own;" this, unfortunately, not being the case, he concluded that they would always be imitators and never innovators.

The situation for Ichiyō and her contemporaries was, needless to say, vastly different. As Waley points out, many male writers were absorbed in imitating the modern novel, the most significant European literary genre to be imported into Meiji Japan. He did not, however, mention the fact that Meiji women writers began by imitating the men. Yabu no Uguisu (A Songbird in the Grove, 1888), the first novel to be produced by a woman in the Meiji era, was written by a twenty-year-old student named Tanabe Kahō (1868-1943).

Both Ichiyō and Kahō grew up reading the epic romances of the Edo period, such as Takizawa Bakin's Hakkenden (The Legend of Eight Dogs, 1814-41), and both received instruction in the classical literature of the Heian period, and in the composition of waka, one of the forms of classical Japanese poetry, at the private school of Nakajima Utako, one of the prominent women poets of the time.…

In a backhanded sort of way, fate seems to have favored Ichiyō the writer—she had neither the lack of dedication that put an end to Kahō's literary career, nor a husband to prohibit her from writing. Nevertheless, when she embarked on a career as a protessional writer at the age of nineteen, Ichiyō was faced with an overwhelming obstacle—she was a young woman seeking entrance into a man's world. Her male mentor, Nakarai Tōsui, told her as much when they met for the first time. He tried to warn her of the many hardships she would encounter, and suggested that she look for some other kind of employment. But Ichiyō was determined, and with good cause. She, her mother, and her sister were already engaged in what was virtually the only "other kind of employment" available to women at the time—taking in washing and sewing—and were having a hard time making ends meet.

At the height of her career, Ichiyō had long since left both Tōsui and Kahō behind. She had, in fact, succeeded in becoming that rarity of rarities—an artist who is recognized in her own time. When Takekurabe (Growing Up), her most widely read novel today, was published in complete form for the first time in the magazine Bungeikurabu (The Literature Club) in April, 1896, it was highly praised in a review written jointly by Mori Ogai, Kōda Rohan, and Saitō Ryoku-u, three of the most outstanding literary figures of the time. The review thrilled Ichiyō's young colleagues on the staff of Bungakkai (The World of Literature), the magazine in which Growing Up had previously been published in installment form. Aspiring young writers like themselves would be happy to die if they received such praise from Ogai, they told her.

The young men were almost delirious with you, but Ichiyō found herself unable to join in their rapture. She later reflected bitterly in her diary:

Nine out of ten of the people who come to see me are delighted just to see a woman; they are drawn by the unusual. That's why even the merest scrap I produce sets them all aflutter, hailing me as today's Sei Shonagon or Murasaki, They're really just unthinking people with no depth; just seeing a woman is enough to keep them amused. And the vagueness of their reviews! There are faults in my writing, but they can't see them. Even the good points they don't bother to explain. It's all just "Ichiyō is wonderful. Ichiyō is great. Say nothing of women writers, even men should take their hats off to such skill." That's all, just "Ichiyō is wonderful, Ichiyō is great." Don't they have anything else to say? Surely they should be able to find some faults to point out. A strange state of affairs indeed.

The young men had given Ichiyō the nickname "cynic," and in this passage from her diary, she certainly seems to have earned it. Yet as Shigematsu Yasu has pointed out, the pessimism of this diary entry cannot wholly be discounted as the mere product of a cynical personality. To most of her readers, Ichiyō was, as a woman writer, little different from the popular female entertainers of the time. Even the intentions of such distinguished men of letters as Mori Ogai and Kōda Rohan are not completely above suspicion. Ogai, for example, sent his younger brother, Miki Takeji, along with Rohan to Ichiyō's house the summer before she died to request her participation in the writing of a "dramatic joint novel." The novel was to be written in letter or diary form, with each writer taking an assigned role, and Ichiyō was to be the "leading lady." While it might be argued that Ogai wanted Ichiyō to participate because he saw her as an equal, the jovial nature of the discussion of plans for the novel as recorded in Ichiyō's diary suggests that Miki Takeji and Kōda Rohan regarded the whole project as something of a sport, and were hoping that the presence of a female celebrity would brighten it up a bit. Ichiyō did not enjoy the status of celebrity, for it made her the target of gossip and brought the antagonism of old friends. At the same time, however, it is probable that she sensed and resented the existence of a double standard in the criticism of men's and women's writing, and that this resentment was at least partially responsible for her cynicism.

She was, however, mistaken when she compared her fame to the ephemeral blossom of the morning glory (diary, May 2, 1896). Whether or not the double standard still exists is a moot point, but at any rate, Ichiyō's novels continue to be read and criticized, and she continues to be compared to Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon. Her best loved novel is still Growing Up, and her most criticized one, Nigorie (Troubled Waters). There is no doubt as to whether these two novels deserve the attention they have received. Growing Up, an elegiac portrayal of what growing up means to a group of children who live just outside the licensed quarter, in a world in which neither dreams nor freedom are permitted to exist, is a masterpiece. Oriki, the beautiful and complex heroine of Troubled Waters, who finally dies by the side of her lover, Genshichi, has with reason kept the critics puzzled since the novel was first published in 1895. Although it is these two works that have gained her an established place in the literary history of modern Japan, her last works show us that she had not said all she had to say when she died at the age of twenty-four.

Ichiyō's last completed story is about a beautiful but impoverished seamstress of mysterious origin named Okyō, and Kichizō, the defiant but lonely orphan who depends on her as his sole source of emotional support. Because of his small stature, Kichizō is often teased and has been nicknamed "Tom Thumb;" on the other hand quick to use his fists, he is also feared throughout the neighborhood as "a regular fire-ball." Teased or feared, Kichizō is totally isolated from those around him, and his isolation only strengthens his affection for the kindly Okyō, who is the only one willing to fully accept him. When Okyō decides to leave her life of poverty behind and become the mistress of a wealthy man, however, the two must part. The furious Kichizō rants and raves, but her mind is made up, and she refuses to listen. Her affection for him is nevertheless not dead and, pinioning his arms from behind, she tries one last time to make him realize it. Her effort is to no avail, however, and the story ends with Kichizō's words: "Okyō, please, take your hands off me."

"Wakaremichi," the title of this story, has been translated both as "The Parting of the Ways," and "Separate Ways" As the story concerns the parting of two people, either translation is acceptable. However the fact that the original title contains the nuance of a fork in the road also suggests that the characters are not only parting from each other, but that each—Okyō in particular—is standing at a crossroads in life.

This is an element that is absent from all of Ichiyō's previous novels. Midori, the lively heroine of Growing Up, is destined to follow in her older sister's footsteps and become a prostitute, and although she bemoans her fate at the close of the novel, she can do nothing to change it. In Troubled Waters, Oriki, the mainstay of the Kikuno-i, a low class brothel, dies with her lover, Genshichi, and although there is some contention as to whether or not she dies willingly, few would dispute that she was fated to do so. Oseki, the female protagonist of Jusan 'ya (On the Thirteenth Night), is the daughter of a shizoku (samurai) family who have fallen on hard times. Her marriage to Harada Osamu, a wealthy politician, has brought financial help to her parents and employment for her brother; she is nevertheless unable to bear her husband's cruelty and, leaving her small son, comes back to her parents' home, determined never to return to him. Her father, however, convinces her that the family name is more important than her own personal happiness. They will all cry with her, he tells her, if she will cry as Harada's wife.

"Wakaremichi," her last completed story, marked a turning point for Ichiyō. Stylistically, the skillful use of dialogue replaced long, lyrical, descriptive passages peppered with allusions to Heian literature, producing a degree of restraint that she had never before achieved. More importantly, however, in Okyō, Ichiyō created a new kind of heroine. Unlike all of Ichiyō's previous heroines, Okyō is not overwhelmed by a force that comes from outside of herself. Albeit within an extremely limited range of possibilities, she herself makes the decision that will determine her fate.

For Ichiyō, writing was always a long and painful process, and for almost every story she completed, she left behind a series of fragments which show the development of the story from its conception to the finished product. An examination of the fragments which are thought to be direct predecessors of "Wakaremichi" reveals two types of women who were eventually to be united in the character of Okyō. One is a woman alone—an orphan who has been jilted by her lover. "You must be terribly lonely now," say the friends of Otae, the heroine of an untitled fragment, while the nameless heroine of another, entitled "Living Alone," weeps all day when her lover fails to appear. The other type is a young woman who, like Ichiyō herself, has a family to support. Okyō the hairdresser, the heroine of one fragment of which only a page or so remains, is a dutiful daughter who has always managed to keep her mother comfortably dressed. Ichiyō might have been indulging in wishful thinking when she added this detail, for she herself never managed to keep her own mother "comfortably dressed." Like Ichiyō herself, however, Okyō the hairdresser is the sole source of financial support for a fatherless family, and it therefore seems reasonable to assume that in this fragment Ichiyō was projecting her own situation, and her own responsibilities, onto a factitious character.

The most striking difference between Okyō the hairdresser and Okyō the seamstress is that Okyō the seamstress has been released from the burden of family responsibility which Ichiyō had previously projected onto Okyō the hairdresser. Okyō the seamstress is, in fact, stripped of a past. Aside from the opening scene in which Kichizō reminds her that people say that she is of noble origin, the reader is not given the slightest hint as to how Okyō came to be living alone in a rundown tenement, supporting herself by taking in sewing. This is very unusual for Ichiyō, who sketched the origins of all her heroines preceding Okyō with painstaking care.

Okyō also differs from Otae in that, although alone, she is dependent on no one. As can be seen from the following passage, even when she says she is lonely, the force of her bright, outgoing personality is enough to eliminate any trace of the pathos we feel for a halpless creature like Otae, or the heroine of "Living Alone":

Okyō, the seamstress, had moved into the tenement in the spring. Quick-witted and sensible, she got along well with everyone, and since the owner of the umbrella shop was her landlord, she was especially friendly to the boys who worked there.

"Bring your mending to me," she told them, "there are so many of you, the owner's wife can't possibly have enough time to do it all herself. All I've got to do is sew all day, so it's really no trouble. I get lonely here all by myself, so come on over for a visit when you're free. I have no use for people who put on airs, so that rascal Kichizō suits me just fine. The next time you lose your temper, and think you want to pound the white dog over at the rice shop, come on over to my place—I'll give you the mallet and you can pound the fulling block instead. That way, no one will be angry at you, and it'll be a great help to me—we'll kill two birds with one stone."

Okyō is, in fact, the light to Kichizō's dark—the positive to his negative. Because of her extroverted personality, she has no need to cling to a single person, whereas Kichizō, who is totally alienated from his neighbors and fellow workers, expends most of his emotional energy in an endless search for one person who will be everything to him and him alone. When it appears that Okyō might actually be that person, he clings to her desperately, and when she decides to leave him, "comparing her to his own purity," he berates her for her dishonesty. There is an element of childlike purity in Kichizō's desire to cling to the dream that he and Okyō might live forever side by side, as brother and sister. At the same time, however, his possessiveness reveals the childish, narcissistic side of his nature.

As Kichizō's desire to keep Okyō by his side is a selfish one, so might Okyō's decision to leave behind Kichizō and her life of poverty be called selfish. Yet whereas Kichizō's selfishness is rooted in a childish wish to surround himself with a dream world which will protect him from the harsh reality of his isolation, Okyō's stems from a much more practical source—the will to survive.

"I'm tired of washing and mending," she tells Kichizō, "and I know things aren't going to get any better, so I'm ready to try anything—even life as a kept woman. I won't mind going through this world in a soiled kimono." In an essay on Ichiyōp's work, a leading Meiji critic, after quoting these lines, wrote, "Is this not a voice of true desperation? … Is this not, indeed, the last voice to be raised by a woman of old Japan?" [Sōma Gyōfōn, Waseda Bungaku, January, 1910]. The situation of women in the Meiji era was indeed desperate. Many young girls like Midori were still being sold into prostitution by their parents, and the only avenue of escape from poverty for a woman like Okyō was to enter into a kind of modified prostitution. Behind the note of despair in Okyō's words, however, we hear the voice of a woman who has the strength to make her own decisions; to change, albeit in a small way, the course of her own fate.

Ichiyō ends the story with the following exchange between Okyō and Kichizō:

"It's not a place where anyone would want to go, but my mind is made up, and I'm not going to change it now. Thanks for the advice, but I can't follow it." Kichizō had tears in his eyes. "Okyō, please take your hands off me."

As Okyō herself realizes, the decision she has made will not lead to a "happy" solution to the problem of poverty. Life as a kept woman will be, in many ways, as degrading as poverty itself. It is, nevertheless, the life that Okyō has chosen for herself, and she marches toward it with a graceful resignation that is perhaps the best expression of her personality. As an impoverished seamstress, her outgoing personality led her to turn her attention to those around her, rather than dwelling on her own problems; now that she has decided to leave that life behind, she turns toward the future and does not look back. Her decision has robbed Kichizō of his female mentor; he must reach the painful realization that Ichiyō herself reached near the end of her life—that all human beings are alone in this world, and that each must fend for himself.

In considering Okyō's place in the line of Ichiyō's heroines-, it is important to note that her decision is entirely her own. Unlike Otama, the female protagonist of Mori Ogai's Wild Geese (1911-13), who is forced to become a kept woman in order to support her aging father, Okyō, who is stripped of a past, has no outside obligations. She is the first of Ichiyō's heroines to stand at a crossroads—to be offered, and take, a choice that can change her future. Before she died, Ichiyō was to attempt the depiction of another heroine who stands at a crossroads. In contrast to the world of poverty and prostitution that is usually associated with Ichiyō, Oritsu, the heroine of Uramurasaki, is a well-to-do wife whose material needs are more than satisfied, but who commits adultery in order to fulfill a purely emotional need. Although this story was left incomplete, its significance lies in the fact that it shows a final attempt on Ichiyō's part to leave the sphere in which the fate of her protagonists was determined by forces beyond their control, and enter a new stage, in which the protagonist has become aware of her own subjectivity, and must decide for herself what course she will take in life.

Oritsu tells her good-natured husband that she is going to see her sister, and sets out for the lodging house where her lover, a student named Yoshioka, lives. After leaving her house, however, she stops, and begins to consider the possible consequences of her adultery. Her husband is, after all, good to her, and her lover is still young—their relationship, if discovered, would ruin his future. At this point in the story, Oritsu is literally standing at a crossroads in life, and, "with an icy smile on her lips," chooses the road that leads to her lover.

The first chapter, which was all of Uramurasaki to be published in Ichiyō's lifetime, ends here. As Kawamura Sei-ichiro has pointed out, however, this fragment can be read as a complete work which depicts the psychology of a woman as she stops, wavers, then comes to a final decision. If this is so, then Uramurasaki has the added significance of showing that in her later works, Ichiyō's literary interest lay in the psychology of her characters, rather than "the story" itself. Be that as it may, it is clear that in these last two works, Ichiyō, no longer satisfied with telling the sad stories of women overwhelmed by fate, had begun to grapple with the problem of how a woman should live in the society of Meiji Japan. The problem was not an easy one (because of the nature of Meiji society, the possibilities were, as we have seen, extremely limited) and Ichiyō was not able to solve it in her own lifetime. The fact that just before her death she had begun to try, however, is in itself enough to warrant her being called the first modern woman writer of Japan.

As we have seen, Ichiyō's last heroines were women who are no longer left to be carried this way or that by the ill winds of fate. Having become aware of their own subjectivity, Okyō and Oritsu were each forced to make a decision that would determine the course of their lives. In these two heroines, we can see Ichiyō's final attempt to depict the awakening of a sense of self.

The impact that the idea of individualism, which first entered Japan by way of the English romantic poets and the American transcendentalists, had on Ichiyō's male contemporaries has been widely discussed. Through her association with Shimazaki Tōson (1872-1943) and other members of the staff of the magazine Bungakkai, who formed the nucleus of the romantic movement in Meiji literature, Ichiyō is thought to have had some vicarious exposure to Western literature. Yet it must be remembered that a complete lack of foreign languages barred Ichiyō from direct contact with foreign literature, and that, more importantly, having been trained (or rather self-taught) entirely in the Japanese classics, she had no means of developing a foundation upon which to accept foreign ideology. The awakening of the self that can be seen in her last heroines should therefore be seen not as the result of Western influence, but rather as something which grew out of her own experience.

The relationship between Ichiyō and her "mentor," Tōsui, has provided a focal point for much of the criticism on Ichiyō which has appeared to date. This first and last love affair was undoubtedly important for Ichiyō, not only because it formed the basis for her pessimistic view of love itself, but also because through it, she came to an awareness of feelings within herself that were not compatible with her "public" duties as heir to the Higuchi family. I believe that it was this conflict between personal emotion and public responsibility, which arose within Ichiyō when her love for Tōsui threatened to tarnish the family name, that made her aware, for the first time, of the existence of a self which was in direct opposition to the samurai morality that demanded sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the family.

In the end, Ichiyō rejected Tōsui and remained the dutiful daughter. The self which she was unable to express through her lifestyle, however, came to maturity along with her growing sense of herself as an artist. As an artist, she was able to attain the independence that was denied her on the level of everyday life. Thus, although the tender feelings she had for Tōsui never died, as an artist she thought nothing of passing judgement on his work, and her judgements were never favorable.

More importantly, however, is the fact that although she had embarked on a literary career as a means of supporting her family, she continued to write even after all hopes of achieving this initial goal were gone. Her mother, who had no understanding of the creative process, and who never lost sight of the initial monetary goal, chided her for her slowness, but writing for Ichiyō had long ceased to be a mere means of financial support. She neither could nor would "grind it out" as Tōsui did. Herein lies at least one reason why the Bungakkai group, some of whom were actually older than Ichiyō, tended to look upon her as an older sister. They were aspiring to be what she had already become—a mature artist with a literary world that was all her own.

Here I would like to call attention to the fact that the members of the Bungakkai group, when talking among themselves, often referred to Ichiyō as "Brontë." While this fact does not appear to be particularly significant in itself—the practice of "internationalizing" Japanese writers by comparing them to outstanding Western literary figures was, and still is, a popular one—some interesting parallels emerge when we consider the experience of Ichiyō and Brontë and her generation as women writers. There are, of course, great differences in genre and subject matter. The three-decker novel was an established form when the Brontë sisters began to write, and a comparison between Jane Eyre and a ten-page story like "Wakaremichi" would be meaningless. Nor would any Englishwoman of Brontë's generation have been able to deal as openly with the licensed quarter and the plight of the prostitutes who lived there as openly as Ichiyō did. Yet when she set out to become a writer, Ichiyō faced some of the same obstacles as women in Brontë's generation, and shared with them a similar seriousness about the task of writing itself.

The first of these obstacles was a lack of formal education. As Elaine Showalter has pointed out, nearly all of the Victorian women novelists were educated at home; in other words, they were self-taught, and in order to compensate for their lack of schooling, they struggled to master Latin and Greek. Although Ichiyō did receive an elementary education, her mother believed that too much time spent at school could only have a detrimental effect on a young girl. Her father was sympathetic to his daughter's eagerness to learn, but he was overruled, and Ichiyō's formal schooling came to an end when she was twelve. Like her Victorian counterparts, Ichiyō felt a need to compensate for her lack of education, and this she did through copious reading and frequent trips to the library, where she always found herself to be the only woman.

Although it has been convincingly argued that her immersion in the classics actually hobbled Ichiyō early in her career, just as the zeal of some Victorian women writers for Greek and Latin scholarship resulted in overly pedantic works, Ichiyō's diligence paid off in other ways. At the age of twenty-two, she was delivering lectures on The Tale of Genji, as well as tutoring male students—young men in the process of receiving the higher education of which she herself had been deprived—in the Japanese classics. In an essay entitled "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" (1856), George Eliot expounded upon the need for diligence, responsibility, and "an appreciation of the sacredness of the writer's art." Had Ichiyō had the opportunity to read this essay, she certainly would have wholeheartedly agreed.

The second obstacle was the double standard in criticism of men's and women's writing. Ichiyō seems to have sensed this instinctively, and that is why she could not share in the innocent joy of the young Bungakkai group when they told her of the praise that Mori Ogai had bestowed on her novel Growing Up. Unlike Charlotte Brontë, who was outspoken enough to write letters of protest to reviewers who discriminated against her because of sex, Ichiyō remained demure, keeping her protestations for the pages of her diary. The bitter cynicism she directed toward male critics who gushed with approval yet were unable to find anything to criticize in her work, and toward the public at large who regarded her as an entertainer rather than an artist, is nevertheless no less poignant than Brontë's openly expressed complaints.

Finally, as Showalter has pointed out, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, and their generation of women writers were "… what sociologists call 'female role innovators;' they were breaking new ground and creating new possibilities?" [Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own: British Women's Novelists from Brontë to Lessing, 1977]. I believe that the same can be said of Ichiyō. There is, of course, an obvious difference here as well. The Victorian novelists were really "breaking new ground," and for them, writing created a need to transcend their feminine identity, as is evidenced by the appearance of the male pseudonym. Ichiyō, on the other hand, was backed by a long tradition of female literature, and was, in fact, hailed by critics as a new Murasaki or Sei Shōnagon. The novel was, nevertheless, a genre imported from the West, and Western learning was a realm reserved for the male elite. Only a few women were fortunate enough to get a taste of it at the mission and normal schools which were largely modeled on American schools for girls. It is significant that many women writers of Ichiyō's generation were graduates of these early girls' school; for some of them, like Tanabe Kahō, writing began as a process of imitation, and failed to mature into the status of a true vocation, whereas others, such as Wakamatsu Shizuko and Koganei Kimiko (1870-1956), the younger sister of Mori Ogai, became known for translations and adaptations, rather than for creative work.

As a mature artist, Ichiyō imitated no one. The writers from whom she learned the most were those of the Heian and Edo periods, and in this sense her writing does, to borrow Waley's phrase, "hitch straight on" to these indigenous roots. Yet particularly in the portrayals of Okyō and Oritsu, in whom a sense of self has begun to emerge, there is a note of modernity that can still be heard today. Through her dedication to her art, Ichiyō succeeded in creating a literature of her own, thus paving the way for the generations of women writers who were to follow.