Ichiyo Higuchi (1872-1896) came from a middle-class Tokyo family which slipped into poverty over the course of her childhood. After the deaths of her father and brother, she and her mother and sisters were forced to take in laundry and sewing to survive, and she began publishing her fiction and poetry in an attempt to shore up the family finances. She earned quick recognition for her combination of classical style with attentive observation of working-class street life, but her career was short-lived - she died of tuberculosis at the age of 24, only four years after her first publication.

Still much read in Japan, her portrait graces the 5,000-yen note. nBryan Karetnyk is a British writer rand translator from the Russian and Japanese. His work for Pushkin Press includes books by Gaito Gazdanov, Irina Odoevtseva, Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Jun'Ichiro Tanizaki.n