<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>"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, <em>New Society</em><p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br>Higuchi Ichiyo, Japan's first woman writer of stature in modern times, was born in 1872 and died at the age of twenty-four. In her brief life she wrote poems, essays, short stories and a great, multivolume 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.