From the Margins of Meiji Society: Space and Gender in Higuchi Ichiyō’s “Troubled Waters”

Written and published in 1895, Higuchi Ichiyō’s (1872–96) celebrated short story “Troubled Waters” (Nigorie) centers on Oriki, a beautiful prostitute who serves as the major attraction at an illegal brothel called the Kikunoi. The power of the story lies largely in its effective portrayal of this complex heroine, who is tormented not only by what her profession requires of her but by the family history that drove her into prostitution in the first place, even as she flaunts the façade of a cheerful and willful woman of the pleasure quarters. The centrality of Oriki’s anguish in the narrative has also shaped studies of “Troubled Waters.” In recent years, Timothy J. Van Compernolle has offered a compelling rereading of the text in this vein by analyzing how Oriki’s psychological portraiture is constructed by combining two literary paradigms—(1) shinjū-mono (love-suicide plays) of the early modern period, made canonical by Chikamatsu Monzaemon in the early eighteenth century; and (2) success stories of the Meiji period that center on the ideology of risshin shusse, the modern ideology that lauds worldly success, which had already firmly established itself in the popular imagination by the time of Ichiyō’s writing.1 Van Compernolle’s reading situates “Troubled Waters” at the intersection of the two literary genres and the social mores of the two respective historical periods. This has been a welcome addition to readings that challenge the problematic tendencies that plagued earlier studies of Ichiyō’s texts: (a) overemphasis on Ichiyō’s classical style, which led some critics to overlook her