Child's Play

Higuchi Ichiyo was born in 1872 in Japan.  Her brother died when she was 15, and her father died when she was 17, leaving her, her mother, and her sister to fend for themselves. Her father had always supported her education; he would get her trasnlated, abridged version of classic novels and made her memorize his favorite poems. During her lifetime, Japan was leaving it's "secluded" age and Western customs were taking over Japanese culture, this included education. Men were sent to schools and received a "western" education, but women were not allowed. Ichiyo herself went to an all girls school because of this. She soon taught at the same school, and wrote poems and short stories to supplement the income.

When her father died, she moved her little family to the outskirts of the red-light district. This was an area of extreme poverty, but also an area where western culture had not penetrated and traditional Japanese culture was present. The neighborhood of minstrels, fortune tellers, jugglers, merchants, and day laborers provided Ichiyo with a much grander setting for her fiction, including her most famous piece, "Child's Play."

Ichiyo was largely unknown until this short story was published. It's main characters are a group of children about 13 or 14. A major present in the short story is a loss of innocence as the children grow up. This can be reflected to Japan losing it's "innocence," in a sense; when the US came charging in with it's gunboat diplomacy, forcing industrial civilization on a previously secluded Japan. It can also be reflected in Ichiyo's own life; when her father died, she was forced to grow up and get a job to support her mother and sister, not only at a young age, but also at a time when that was traditionally the man's role.

This theme of growing up can be tied to another short story we read call "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" by Richard Wright. But in this story, rather than the adult world thrusting itself upon the young boy, the young boy tries to thrust himself into the adult world. He believes he is a man when he is still just a boy, and when he tries to act like a man he ends up killing a mule. Rather than face his problems and take the consequences, he runs from them, further proving that he's still just a boy with more growing up to do.