Commentary

One way to think about this story is that we are witnessing Midori's transformation from a child with a youthful disposition to a more mature young person, someone on the path to becoming a woman of the quarter. Ichiyô delicately draws all the pathos and poignancy she can out of these pivotal moments of awareness.

 

What for Midori seems like a glamorous and fun lifestyle in the quarter has a much darker side. But she cannot see it yet. She is still too young.

So she is left divided between two worlds: her Childhood and the Adult world that awaits her.

Initially, Midori is a carefree young girl who spends a lot of her time playing with her friends in the quarter; but she also benefits from her sister's position as a high-profile prostitute.

[Her parents] saw to it that Midori went to school and that she learned her sewing and her music. The rest of the time she was on her own: lolling around her sister's rooms for half the day, playing in the streets the other half. (260)

However, Midori cannot remain straddled between the two worlds indefinitely. The narrator hints at her future transformation: "What will become of her? Her parents looked the other way, never a word of caution" (259).

The different worlds are accentuated by the "derangment" of linear time. The first mention of a specific time occurs in the 3rd paragraph, part of the scene-setting endeavor, where Otori Days come up; they are in November.  But the narrative present seems to be established in the second section or chapter, which opens at the Festival of the Senzoku Shrine in August.

The story then flashes back to the spring of the previous year, and then returns to autumn and finally winter of the present year by the end. Through this timeless panoramic vision, Ichiyô gives the reader an understanding of the quarter in its totality.

The narrative is also littered with symbols of sex that disrupt the innocence of Midori's childhood and hint towards her physical maturation.

From the beginning, Midori is portrayed as the object of the gaze, based on the vocabulary of male sexual desire:

Undone, her hair would reach her feet [. . .] Her skin was fair and her nose nicely shaped. Her mouth, a little large perhaps, was firm and not at all unattractive. (259)

The gaze fixed on Midori represents moments of anticipation this still very young Midori, growing up into and becoming a mature object of sexual desire.

Customers of the quarters, discussing Midori's potential appeal, eagerly anticipate her sexual ripening:

'I'd like to see her three years from now!' Young men leaving the quarter would remark when they noticed her returning from the morning bath. . . . (259)

Of course, Midori's sexual identity is also anticipated from the very outset by her association with her prostitute sister, Ômaki. As a well-known woman of the quarter, Ômaki's success reflects well on her family and allows them preferential treatment by others:

No question about it, the child's privileges derived from her sister's position. Midori knew it, too. Her parents were mere caretakers for the Master's house, but her sister was Ômaki of the Daikokuya.(269)

Midori is also proud of her sister's calling:

Who wouldn't envy a sister like Ômaki? What with her recent success, it was nothing for her to repay all the debts she had ever owed her parents. (271)

With such a prominent sister, Midori too is identified with the opportunities and benefits of Ômaki's profession. Midori's mother gazes on the young girl's body to determine her future marketability:

Her mother took charge of repairing the girl's hairdo. A beauty, even if she did say so, the women thought, inspecting her daughter from every angle. (263)

Though still a child, Midori is starting to be identified as a mature object of sexual desire in the eyes of those around her which strongly alludes to her future in the pleasure quarters.

 

As she learns more and more about her sister's occupation (but she is still naive about what it is really all about), she starts to realize things about men:

Midori, who spent her days and nights immersed in such a world, soon took on the color of the quarter. In her eyes, men are not such fearsome things. (272)

So Midori takes on the color of the quarter. That's a great way to put it. She absorbs it, internalizes its spirit. Even her interactions with her childhood friends take on adult implications. When Shôta meets Midori on the street, he beckons her to accompany him home, tugging on Midori's sleeve until she agrees like a young man picking-up a prostitute in the quarter.

 

There the two innocently flirt:

Occasionally their eyes would meet.


"You looked so handsome yesterday, Shôta. It made me wish I were a boy. You were the best dressed of them all.'
'

"I looked good! You were beautiful! Everybody said you were prettier than any of the girls in the quarter, even your sister Ômaki." (267)

Later, when the two are playing games together, the Shopkeeper's wife teases Shôta about his future wife:

Why the prettiest one [Midori] is sitting right next to you.

Embarrassed by the shopkeeper's bluntness, Shôta retreats in humility:

Shôta's face turned scarlet, and he backed away from the light, into a corner. (278)

 

It is clear from this exchange that Shôta is still a kid, unable to handle the prospects of a mature relationship with a female. Midori, on the other hand, shows no signs of embarrassment whatsoever:

 

Her face was not flushed in the slightest.

The Relationship bretween Nobu and Midori

We learn on p. 268 (top) that Nobu and Midori attend the same school, the Ikueisha, which is talked about on the bottom of 255-256.

 

A new section, starting at the top of 270, describes the end of a typical evening in the quarter, the men slinking off home at dawn--"love's fools" the narrator calls them.

The males, she suggests, are as worthless as a mutt sniffing around garbage. Boys aged 17--the age of insolence--are banding together, strutting around in packs, learning to gamble and to "window shop" the prostitutes in the quarter. They behave like local toughs even though they may come from good families.

And the girls. When they are young, clip-clopping around, they do draw some attention but it is when they ascend to the level of courtesan that "they climb the pedestal."(271)

 

In the narrative present of the story, it is becoming Midori's time--because she spends her days and nights in the quarter and is starting to take on "the color of the quarter." When her older sister had been recruited from their hometown (near Wakayama in the Kishu region) to the Yoshiwara, Midori cried. But now she envies her sister and cannot wait to get into the game herself...even though we are told,

Midori had no notion of what price Omaki might have paid to reign supreme in her profession. To her, it was all a game. (271)

So, this is the crux of it: a large piece of the reality of life in the quarter is still hidden from Midori. Ichiyô brings this home very effectively in the next paragraph where she writes:

It was all a little sad. She was fourteen...The child was still too young to exercise discretion. She was always taken with the flower just before her eyes. A headstrong girl by nature, Midori indulged herself by fluttering about in a world that she had fashioned from the clouds. (271)

Indeed, it is a little sad. This story is inherently steeped in both nostalgia and sadness. We might long for the carefree years of our childhood; but we wil also feel sadness when we think about the fate of the kids in the quarter, especially Midori.

She is "fluttering about" in a world she does not fully understand. But the Quarter is affecting her as she takes on "its color,", learning to speak its language and not embrrassed to do so. Since she is not grounded in reality, however, she is too young to appreciate the price that must eventually be paid.

 

Next, the narrator takes us back to the street scenes which begin on top of p. 270:

The men are still heading home and the street entertainers--the singing candy man, the actors, the puppeteers, the jugglers and the acrobats--are about. Clearly, Ichiyô loves the Quarter, loves it as a colorful place in which to grow up; but hates this world into which children must grow up.

Midori's relationship with Nobu also underscores her transformation from innocence to sexual awareness. This transformation occurs during three events in the story. These events are linked both by poetic imagery and by a teleological narrative structure, involving Midori's sexual maturation.

The narrative repeats three particular images: mud, sandals, and a crimson handkerchief. These images are repeated in descriptions of Midori, providing an alternative to the development of a narrative linked through causality. This brings to mind Burch's caution that we should not necessarily expect western-style linearity or causality in all Japanese narratives.

First, we saw how in an incident between Midori and some of the back-street gang, mud and sandals emerge as important symbols. The repetition of these images creates a connection between this event and the previous one, also signifying a further separation between Midori and Nobu.

 

Remember how back on a summer evening, Sangorô is jumped and beaten up by Chôkichi and his posse?

After a heated exchange in which Midori tells him off, Chôkichi says

"You're nothing but a whore, just like your sister." (264)

He then takes off his muddy sandal and throws it at her:

With a splatter, it struck her square on the forehead. (264)

This may be "child's play" but it is a powerful moment in the story. Chôkichi has sullied Midori both verbally and physically.

Though Nobu is not present at the time, he is implicated in Chôkichi's misconduct because Chôkichi brags to his rivals about recruiting Nobu to his gang.

 

By the way, guess who's joined our side. Nobu from Ryûge Temple! So try and get even any time you want (264).

 

Hurt by Nobu's betrayal, Midori's estrangement from him grows (265).

And consider the events on pp. 279-280:

When she sees Nobu stumble into a patch of red mud near a pond, Midori kindly offers her crimson handkerchief to wipe his muddy coat. Both the season of the year, April—when the cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom—and the red tones of the mud and handkerchief underscore the role her sexual maturation is starting to play in the story.

While the two children are hardly aware of the romantic implications of this episode, others pickup on their connection:

'For a priest's son, he sure knows how to flirt. Look at him smile when he thanks her! What's he going to do—take her for his wife?' (268)

The two eventually become aware of these rumors and become very self-consciousness (268). This event marks the beginning of the change in Midori and her relationship with Nobu.

 

Another page or to further on (pp. 279-281) we find that:

All three images—mud, sandals and the crimson handkerchief—combine in a symphonic conclusion. Occurring almost a year later, this similar interaction between Midori and Nobu resonates with the same tones as their first encounter. On a stormy afternoon, a few days after the street fight, the hapless Nobu, running an errand for his mother, breaks his sandal in a ditch of mud, this time in front of Midori's house. As before, Midori, despite her embarrassment, offers her crimson handkerchief to Nobu:

There— she hurled the rag outside the lattice without saying anything. (281)

The sexualized color of red sets the tone for the scene:

The scarlet scrap of Yûzen silk lay in the rain, its patterns of red maple leaves near enough to touch. (281)

So, these three separate events are linked by the repetition of similar images, which produces a certain rhythm in the narrative.

While the reader finds Midori and Nobu in a similar situation as a year ago, surrounded by similar imagery, some things have changed. The individual reactions of the two illustrate the transformation their relationship has undergone.

Midori's embarrassment and discomfort towards Nobu is a product of her transformation and growing realization of her own sexuality. Midori witnesses Nobu's accident from her bedroom window. Not realizing it's him at first, she rushes to help, only to freeze up when she discovers who it actually is. No longer acting out of innocence and "kindness" as before, she is frozen in terror:

The blood rushed to Midori's head. Her heart pounded as if she encountered a dreaded fate. (280)

Nobu, too, is overcome with a newfound fear:

He was speechless, he felt cold sweat begin to bead. He wanted to kick off the other sandal and run away. (280)

Though unaware of the implications of the handkerchief in the earlier incident, Nobu is profoundly touched by Midori's offering this time—her scarlet scrap of Yuzen silk--is now imbued with emotional significance:

The scarlet scrap of Yuzen silk lay in the rain, it's pattern of red maple leaves near enough to touch. Odd, how her one gesture moved him, and yet he could not bring himself to reach out and take the cloth. He stared at it vacantly, as he looked at it he felt his heart break. (281)

So now we get to a key underlying issue: heartbreak! This is really an evocative passage--the silk scrap with it's red maple design lying in the rain and mud. This is about their hearts and their future, and the outlook is not promising.

 

Nobu realizes that what is in his heart can never come to pass in real life. Both Nobu and Midori are now acutely aware of the romantic and sexual tension that lies beneath the surface of their relationship, and they fear the implications of this transformation. Midori, who initially misinterpreted Nobu's behavior, shows a newfound self-awareness. The narrator reminds us that, "this was not the old Midori." (280)

The bottom line is that with their "Growing Up" (the other popular English translation of the story's title, "Takekurabe"), Midori and Nobu's relationship has reached a turning point. And once their friendship has been transformed and reached this stage, it seems no longer possible to return to the state of innocence associated with childhood. Remember the earlier quote:

A great river now stretched between them that all boats were forbidden to cross. Each of them walked alone on separate banks of the stream. (269)

 

Isn't this quite the powerful metaphor--a great river separating the two young characters, Nobu and Midori, who are destined for two very different worlds? Obviously, they are drawn to each other but nothing can ever come of it. This is an example of pain and poignancy which are at the center of this narrative!

 

It is said that in life, we can only move forward by leaving something behind; in this case, that "something" being left behind could be the innocence of childhood.

 

 

The final sections of the story reinforce the idea of Midori's transformation and her realization of the opposing forces that are active in her life. She grows increasingly aware of her sexual subjectivity and realizes that she is becoming the object of the male gaze.

 

Although it is painful for her, she experiences a newfound self-consciousness when she begins to realize how closely her sexual attractiveness is tied to her identity.

When Shôta asks Midori if she will take a picture with him, she responds jokingly: "What if I look funny, you might not like me anymore." (267)

 

 

And let's not forget the poignant little poem on p. 283:

Growing up,

she plays among the butterflies

and flowers.

But she turns sixteen,

and all she knows

is work and sorrow.

 

Doesn't this encompasses Midori's coming-of-age experience in just a few powerful lines? She is still only fourteen but she not only remembers playing with butterfiles and flowers...she could still take pleasure in this. But the clock is ticking on her adolescence.

And later, after Midori gets a "grown-up [Shimada] hairdo" near the end of the story, everyone notices. Shôta and the other children can do nothing but stare at her. When Shôta asks her about her appearance, Midori displays a painful self-consciousness:

Midori had difficulty speaking. "I had it done this morning at my sister's. I hate it." Her spirits drooped. She kept her head down; she couldn't bear it when a passerby would gawk. (284)

In this moment, we can infer that Midori has come to understand what is happening to her, where her life is taking her. When she retreats to the comforts of her bedroom, she experiences the bitterness of a tension between the thrust to change and the desire to remain young.

Shôta tries hard to understand what is going on with her, but he can't. He is mystified. He assumes he has done something wrong but he cannot fathom what it might be.

"Shôta, it isn't you." Midori wiped her eyes.

But when he asked her what it was, she couldn't answer. There were just sad things, vague things. Feelings....She couldn't put them into words. They made her cheeks burn. Nothing she could point to--yet lately, everything discouraged her. So many thoughts; none of them would ever have occurred to the Midori of yesterday. This awkwardness all of a sudden! How was she to explain it?

If they would just leave her alone [. . .] she'd be happy to spend night and day in a dark room. No one to talk to her, no one to stare [. . .] If only she could go on playing house forever—with her dolls for companions, then she'd be happy again. Oh! She hated, hated, hated this growing up! Why did things have to change? What she would give to go back a year, ten months, seven months even.

They were the thoughts of someone already old. (285)

 

Oh, my. There it is. All the pain of transitioning out of adolescence and becoming a young adult. But the world she is growing into is not the world of a loving, middle-class family. This is the harsh world of the Quarter, the Willow World where, like it or not, it is all about the sex trade.

 

Her thoughts are no longer those of a young, innocent girl. Now, they have become those of "someone already old."

 

It can hardly get much clearer than that!

 

Why do things have to change? Why can't she go back to being as she was?

Indeed, what has changed?

 

Midori has matured physiclly, experienced her first period, and has come to know the flood of emotions that are beyond her control. Now she experiences all the awkwardness, the embarrassment and the discomfort of going through these kinds of changes. She is transitioning into full-blown adolescence. And with this transformation comes all the confusing emotions that she is feeling. This is what puts her in such turmoil.

 

So perhaps "Child's Play" comes down to this:

To grow up is always a painful and awkward process for any of us; but the stakes for Midori are especially high. We know that she will eventually become a prostitute, a sex-worker. There really isn't any way to sugarcoat this painful truth. And it has just started to dawn on her. This is what is so agonizingly poignant about this story!

 

Higuchi does an amazing job embedding the pain of this realization in her sweet, touching story of these young children when they could still just be children, and she does this by showing us their world through their own eyes. There is such warmth and beauty in these depictions of carefree children worrying about which "gang" will best the other come festival time.

But she also shows us how this world must change into something considerably darker. And though we do not actually see all the details of how this transpires, we understand that the innocence of childhood that Higuchi so movingly portrays, will soon be ripped from them.

 

The final lines of the story capture all of this beautifully:

One frosty morning, a paper narcissus lay inside the gate. No one knew what it was doing there, but Midori took a fancy to it, for some reason, and she put it in a bud vase. It was perfect, she thought, and yet almost sad in its crisp, solitary shape. That same day--she wasn't sure exactly where--Midori heard of Nobu's plans. Tomorrow he was leaving for the seminary. The color of his robes would never be the same. (287)

Nope, they will not be the same and neither will the children of the Quarter. That's what growing up is all about. It's hard to say, but possibly the narcissus was put there by Shôta; probably Nobu is already too resigned to his fate to out it there. But doesn't that make the ending even more poignant?

 

 

In my most recent book, The Turn Against the Modern (2017), I studied the writings of Taoka Reiun who was a young literary critic in 1895-96 when Higuchi was writing. Reiun praised Higuchi above all other contemporary writers because of what he called her "empathy," her dôjô (同情), her "sympathy" for her young characters and the situations in which the found themselves. He was a careful reader of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who developed his concept of Mitleid, or compassion/empathy. Reiun felt this was something very deep and he looked for writers who could manifest this in their fiction.

 

He wanted to see writers depict the lives of the less fortunate people with this kind of compassion and empathy. He wanted authors tp tell the stories of those people from the lower classes who are doomed to struggle socially and economically. Who can disagree with that idea? And the fact that he was able to articulate this as early as 1895 is pretty remarkable!

 

 

 

Some of the ideas in these pages rely heavily on an ASPAC paper I read that was written by Marc Yamada. Many of the quotes come from his essay though some have also been modified by me.

See https://www.academia.edu/22991859/The_Emergence_of_Evolutionary_Narratives_in_Higuchi_Ichiy%C3%B4_s_Takekurabe

 

 

 

 

 

 

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