In the Shade of Spring Leaves

Higuchi Ichiyo, Japan's first woman writer of stature in modern times, wrote poems, essays, short stories and a great, multi-volumed diary. This book is made up of a critical biography, interlaced with extracts from the diary, and Robert Danly's translations of nine representative stories. “The Danly-Ichiyo book is one of those works where the author and subject seem so perfectly matched that the style of each suffuses and inspires the other: Danly as translator and commentator picks up and transforms Ichiyo’s blend of formal and colloquial language into flowing, strong, modern terms; she, in turn, spreads her wit, her melancholy, her sudden piercing insights to Danly.” —Jonathan Spence, New Society