Higuchi Ichiyō (1872-1896) was the daughter of a peasant with high social aspirations who bought her samurai status shortly before the Meiji Restoration began. During her father's life, the family suffered no financial hardship, but after her death in 1889 and that of the author's older brother shortly before, the women of the family began to suffer serious hardships. One of the first consequences, both of the poverty that ensued, and of the common belief at that time that women should not show off much culture, was that Higuchi Ichiyō had to abandon his formal education, despite obtaining excellent performance. academic. However, she was allowed to continue a training based on the Japanese literary classics that would have a direct impact on the narrative and compositional style, indebted to Ihara Saikaku and with abundant Heian overtones, which the author would later develop. Before his death from a lung condition at just twenty-four years old, Higuchi Ichiyō, thanks to the exquisiteness and quality of his work, achieved on his own merits the recognition and the highest distinctions of Japanese women's literature since the time of Murasaki Shikibu, until the point that it has deserved to appear as an effigy of the 5000 yen banknotes.