Japn 230 Higuchi Ichiyō: "Child’s Play"

Note: Literally, "Take" means "Bamboo" while "Kurabe" comes from the verb, "kuraberu," to compare. So, the title references comparing the growth of baby bamboo shoots. That is why some have translated this story's title,"Takekurabe," as "Comparing Heights." It was also initially known to English language readers as "Growing Up."

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The short story “Child’s Play” by Higuchi Ichiyō is about a group of adolescents growing up behind the brothels in the red-light districts of Japan. The story highlights the transition from childhood to adulthood.

 

The characters include

--the roughneck Chōkichi, who knows nothing but getting his own way;

--the “big kid” Sangorō, who stays optimistic as he flows along the current;

--the heroine Midori, who was brought up into her sister’s success as a prostitute;

--her best friend Shōta, who has no choice but to live as a pawnbroker; and

--the scholar Nobuyuki, who is fated to become a cleric.

 

These children become self-conscious of their lives and their bonds of friendship gradually diminish. The tale unfolds to reveal Shōta’s feelings for Midori, but Midori unknowingly longs for Nobuyuki.

Then there’s Nobuyuki, who angrily yearns for Midori, but their fates are all sealed; a pawnbroker’s crush has feelings for another, a courtesan cannot marry, and a monk cannot take a wife.

Growing up leaves behind good memories and welcomes loneliness and uncertainty. “Child’s Play” clearly portrays the harsher side of life amongst these children and it is this reality that allows them to mature successfully. Children come to learn of the negatives to life, to understand and discover a way to endure it.

Shōta loses his closest friend, for Midori has changed. Before, she was a delightful and bold child. Now, she is timid and constantly flusters. Nobuyuki, once a quiet and reserved boy, changes his robes into that of a monk’s. These internal changes are from obstacles they have encountered, which allows them to learn about themselves and gain the wisdom they’ve never had.

Life has a funny way of turning you into the one thing you don’t want to be, as stated in the film The Wackness, and I agree with the statement. These children grew up to become people they did not want to be, but growing up also welcomes better times and goals for the future. Even though it was tough for them, their futures are set and life will go on.

 

See also:

"The Voice and Realism of Higuchi Ichiyo"

 

Higuchi Ichiyō is a prominent author and poet who struggled with dire poverty and championed the poor. Over one-hundred years later, in 2004, she was chosen to grace the Japanese 5000 yen ($50) banknote. It was the third time a women had been chosen. The other banknotes were the Empress Jingu (1881) and classic novelist Murasaki Shikibu (2000). Higuchi wrote about poverty-stricken men and women during the modernization of Tokyo at the end of the 1800s. One of her most famous novellas focuses on children who lived in the slums next to the “Pleasure Quarters” of Yoshiwara.

In The Modern Murasaki, author Rebecca Copeland relates, “Ichiyō’s struggle to become a professional writer was not just a woman’s struggle in a male-centered literary society . . . it was more complex: she wanted to write because she knew her writing skills were much more sophisticated than those of her peers, whether male or female.”

From Middle Class to Poverty

Higuchi had been educated at the Haginoya Poetry Conservatory in Tokyo; thus, she possessed a good background in the classics such as Genji Monogatari (The Tales of Genji), and wrote tanka. Her family was from the samurai class that was swiftly becoming impoverished, for their stipends had been cut off. When her father died, she felt responsible to support her mother and sister, but few jobs were open to women and their funds soon disappeared. Furthermore, they left their middle class suburb for a poor area where she set up a store. When her former classmate, Miyake Kaho began to publish articles in literary magazines, Higuchi followed suit.

Influence of Saikaku’s Earthy Style

“Besides her private struggles, Ichiyō’s prose diaries with tanka show her search for a new literary language that would do justice to everyday life in a Tokyo deeply involved in rapid Westernization and modernization,” according to Copeland. Though the literary community had embraced Western realism in novels, poetry and art, Higuchi did not read the newly translated Western literature, but continued to read Japanese literature in Tokyo’s Ueno Library where she discovered author Saikaku for the first time.

The Writer’s Epiphany

Even though Saikaku’s characters were one-dimensional and his language and themes were often vulgar, she was inspired by his colloquial language, wit and verve, resulting in a kind of epiphany. She became able to appreciate the essence of what had made the Heian women poets great. it was not their style, but their “passion, frankness and honesty.” Higuchi found a way to reform her literary language into an earthy style and was liberated from imitating classical women’s styles.

Authorial Voice for Marginal People

Higuchi is often introduced as the “Modern Murasaki” or “female Saikaku."

Timothy Van Compornole has an apt description of Higuchi, “This frail, diminutive writer, who outwardly appeared dauntingly proper and conservative, whose demeanor suggested both wounded pride and a certain stodginess, and who was so soft-spoken before strangers as to be nearly inaudible, found a harder, more critical persona in her fiction, and used it to represent and give voice to marginal figures who might otherwise be socially invisible.” In spite of her poverty, she had the talent and independence to rise above her circumstances.

One of Higuchi’s most famous novellas, Takekurabe is an unrequited love story of children in the sordid outskirts of Yoshiwara (where she lived). The title, Takekurabe, has been translated both as Comparing Heights, Growing Up or Child’s Play. Movies continue to be made of this complex story with undertones from the classics. Midori, Nobu and Chokichi are the main characters:

--Beautiful Midori is smart, innocent, but apprehensive about the future because her sister is already a courtesan in Yoshiwara; whereas

--Nobu is sensitive and introverted, the son of Buddhist priest;

-- and tough Chokichi, who likes to bully Nobu, is the fire chief’s son.

Higuchi’s prose diaries added with tanka brought back the days of the popular poetic diaries for Japanese women since their heydays in the early 10th and 11th centuries since this kind of literature dwindled during the middle ages and returned in the modern era of Meiji. Parts of her diaries, and complete novellas can be found in the Shade of Spring Leaves by Robert Lyons Danly. Unfortunately, she died of tuberculosis at 24 years of age.

References:

Copeland, Rebecca L. & Melek Ortabasi. The Modern Murasaki: Writings by Women of Meiji Japan, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Danly, Robert Lyons. In the Shade of Spring Leaves: The Life and Writings of Higuchi Ichiyo, A Woman of Letters in Meiji Japan, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1981.

Van Compernolle, Timothy J. The Uses of Memory: The Critique of Modernity in the Fiction of Higuchi Ichiyo, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asian Center Press, 2006.

 

From: https://sterbapoet.com/2014/10/11/the-voice-and-realism-of-higuchi-ichiyo/

 

 

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